Pakistan General Election 2024 in numbers

With just less than 24 hours remaining on the polling day on February 08, the nation is set to participate in the biggest election in Pakistan’s history. 

Over 50 percent of the population will exercise their right to elect their leaders for the next five years.

Not only this, the February 8 polls, will be the most expensive ones in the country’s history and 26 times more than the 2008 elections.

As compared to the last elections, where 11,700 candidates participated, now about 18,000 candidates are taking part in the election.

Moreover, in comparison with the 2018 elections, a 95% increase was witnessed in independent candidates. In 2018 polls, 6,037 candidates contested elections independently and now the number has soared to 11,785.

A total of 17,816 candidates are contesting for over 800 national and provincial assembly seats.

Male candidates dominate the chart with 16,930, followed by 800 women and 4 transgenders.

There are 266 general seats in the National Assembly, 297 in the Punjab Assembly, 130 in Sindh, 115 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and 51 in Balochistan.

According to the latest report on the electoral rolls for the 2024 elections, Pakistan has the fifth-highest number of registered voters globally trailing India, Indonesia, the US, and Brazil after a substantial increase of 22.5 million voters, including 12.5 million women, since 2018.

This unprecedented surge brings the total number of registered voters to 128,585,760 in 2024, marking a significant rise from 105,955,409 in 2018 and 86,189,828 in 2013.

Polling stations and booths

A total of 90,675 polling stations with 276,402 polling booths will be set up across Pakistan.

Punjab has the most number of polling stations with 50,944, followed by Sindh with 19,006, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) has 15,697, and 5,028 are in Balochistan.

Voters per province 

The total number of registered voters in Punjab stands at 73.20m, Sindh has 26.99m voters, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has 21.83m voters, Balochistan 5.37m, and Islamabad over one million.

In terms of male and female voters, the gap has reduced significantly since the adoption of Section 47 of the Election Act in 2017. Out of the 22.5 million new voters added, 12.5 million are women and 10 million are men.

Young voters are now standing at 44.22% of the total number of registered voters.

Polling staff and security officials 

As per the Election Commission, a workforce of over 1.4 million is engaged for the 2024 polls, while about 700,000 security personnel are deployed across the country.

Election 2024 budget 

The government has allocated a hefty sum of Rs48 billion for the conduct of the 2024 elections which is more than double the amount set aside for the 2018 polls.

The electoral body has printed 260 million ballot papers for all the 859 constituencies as compared to 220 million ballot papers, that were printed in the 2018 general election.

However, 260 million ballot papers had been printed for the 2024 general election and 2,170 tons of paper had been used for the purpose.