Final figures show polling exceeded all-time high of 63.77%; Male turnout was 67.08%, and female turnout 60.9%
Voter turnout in Tuesday's election for 26 Lok Sabha seats in the state touched an all-time high of 64.11% when the final figures were released by the state's chief electoral officer.
Provisional figures released after polling ended on Tuesday had pegged the turnout at 63.67%, just shy of the record high of 63.77% achieved more than 50 years ago in 1967.
“The final turnout for the 26 Lok Sabha seats is 64.11%, which is a record for Gujarat. More than 2.89 crore out of over 4.51 crore registered voters voted in the elections,” said a senior official in the CEO's office.
The turnout in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in the state was 63.66%, which means the turnout rose by 0.45% in the latest elections.
Male turnout at 67%
Figures provided by the CEO's office show that male turnout in Tuesday's polling was 67.08%, as out of 2.34 crore registered male voters, 1.57 crore exercised their franchise.
Female voting at 60.9%
Female turnout was 60.90%. The figures show that 1.32 crore out of 2.16 crore registered female voters in the state cast their votes on Tuesday. The turnout was slightly higher than in 2014 when 59.7% female voters had voted.
The turnout for third gender voters was 25%, as 248 out of 992 registered voters case their votes, the data shows.
Valsad records highest turnout
The tribal reserved seat of Valsad recorded 75.21% voter turnout, the highest among all seats. The state's southern-most Lok Sabha seat had reported 74.28% in 2014.
Bardoli ST seat saw 73.57% polling, the second highest in the state, followed by Chhota Udepur ST with 73.44%. Dahod recorded 66.18% polling, the lowest among the four tribal reserved Lok Sabha constituencies. Tribal dominated Bharuch saw 73.21% voting.
Amreli sees lowest voting
Amreli Lok Sabha, from where Congress candidate Paresh Dhanani is seen as a strong favourite to win, saw 55.75% polling, the lowest in the state. However, the turnout was higher than in 2014 when it was 54.47%.
Urban seats lag, again
The trend of urban seats lagging rural constituencies in voting continued in the latest elections too. Vadodara with 67.86% voting, and Gandhinagar with 65.57% polling, were the only urban seats that figured among the ten constituencies with the highest turnout. The remaining eight were rural seats.
Surat recorded 64.41% voting in Tuesday's polling, just marginally higher than the average turnout. The turnout in the three remaining urban seats of Ahmedabad East, Ahmedabad West SC, and Gandhinagar, was lower than the average.
Ahmedabad East saw 61.32% voting, Ahmedabad West SC 60.37%, while Rajkot saw 63.15% polling.
Saurashtra at the bottom
Four of the five seats that saw the lowest voting in the elections are in Saurashtra, the CEO data shows. While Amreli recorded the lowest voting percentage of 55.75, Porbandar was the second lowest with 56.79%.
Surendranagar was the third lowest with 57.85%, and Bhavnagar, where 58.41% voters exercised their right to vote, was fifth.
Kutch SC seat recorded the fourth lowest voter turnout at 58.22%.
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