For several months now, the media coverage of the 2024 general elections has been relatively oblivious to the electorate. In the broad public analysis, voters are out while the Election Commission, the caretaker governments, the courts and the establishment are in. There has hardly been any serious effort to understand the electorate, the ultimate stakeholder.

The media debate has focused primarily on controversies, including complaints about an uneven playing field for some parties, especially the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, and the role of certain institutions such as the establishment and the judiciary. In this noise, a central actor, i.e. the Pakistani voter, has been missing. The behaviour of the electorate is going to be all the more interesting in the aftermath of the conviction of former prime minister Imran Khan in two cases on January 30 and 31.

As many as 21 million new voters have been added to the list since the 2018 elections. From an estimated 106 million registered voters in 2018, the number of registered voters for the 2024 elections has risen to 127 million. Who are these voters? How can we understand the potential voters in different categories such as the young, ethnic, religious and female voters? How will the new electorate react to the sentencing of former prime minister Imran Khan in the cypher case and the Tosha Khana cases?

Foremost among the various categories of the electorate in 2024 is the young voter. Pakistan has one of the largest proportions of young population in the world. The 2008 National Youth Policy defined youth as individuals between the ages of 15 and 29. Once youth became a provincial subject in 2010, the provincial governments adopted the same definition. According to a recent report by PILDAT, approximately two-thirds (68 percent) of Pakistan’s population falls under the age of 30. The current median youth age in Pakistan is 20 years. Keeping these figures in perspective, youth is a very significant presence in the electorate.

Historically, the youth have not been deeply interested in political affairs. They have generally shown low voting ratios. According to the Election Commission of Pakistan, out of the 127 million registered voters, approximately 55 million fall within the age bracket of 18-35 years, thus constituting 43.85 percent of the eligible voters. Gallup has noted a historic disconnect between the national voter turnout and young voter turnout with the latter almost always lagging a few digits behind the former. Similarly, PILDAT has noted the average young voter turnout at 31 percent, much lower than the average national voter ratio of 44 percent between 1988 and 2018. All this indicates the political apathy of the youth as a dominant pattern in voter behaviour in Pakistan.

In 2024, major parties have promised to work towards youth welfare and empowerment. Pakistan Peoples Party has announced plans for issuing a ‘youth card,’ and delivering stipends to students for one year. The PML-N’s manifesto talks about job creation and economic growth with a focus on the youth. The PTI has traditionally presented itself as the party catering to the youth’s anxieties and aspirations. The question is whether young voters will participate in the up-coming elections or stay aloof.

How about the ethnic voter? In Pakistan’s electoral history, ethnic parties have enjoyed sizeable support from the electorate. Before the dismemberment of the country in 1971, the Awami League was an electorally viable party that enjoyed mass support in East Pakistan. The 1970 elections also saw the success and short-lived formation of governments by the National Awami Party in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. The NAP had appealed to voters by presenting a mixture of leftist and nationalist agendas. Except for the Punjab, all provinces have demonstrated support for ethnic parties.

Punjab’s domination of key state institutions – particularly military and bureaucracy – and its demographic preponderance in the National Assembly have regularly produced resistance in Sindh, the KP and Balochistan. This was duly represented by ethnic parties which won support in these provinces and produced formidable social movements. Thus, the Awami National Party in KP, Balochistan National Party-Mengal, National Party, Jamhoori Watan Party and Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party in Balochistan, and various factions of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement in Sindh and the ANP and Baloch nationalist parties mobilised the electorate on the questions of provincial autonomy; water and natural energy resources distribution; and sharing of the financial resources with the federation.

Can religious parties of various denominational and ideological creeds secure public support? Pakistan’s history shows unimpressive performance by religious parties in the electoral arena. The religious space is inherently structured along sectarian lines. The Jamaat-i-Islami is currently focusing on Karachi where it has made impressive showing during the last local government elections. Its narrative is similar to the MQM with its focus on Karachi’s governance and civic issues such as infrastructure, environment and provision of clean water. It has engaged in street mobilisation over inflation and has supported the cause of an empowered local government. The potential JI voter is no longer an ideological voter in the sense of the party’s promotion of non-religious issues of governance and service delivery.

Is the JUI-F voter an ideological voter? The party enjoys control over a vast network of mosques and madrassas in the KP and Balochistan. The party has an advantage over the JI in the sense that the JUI-F voters have been traditionally concentrated in the KP, especially Dera Ismail Khan and have graduated to the stage of civic voters. In that capacity, the JUI-F has drawn on its patronage power whereby its voters have enjoyed access to local, district and provincial governments through the party’s representation at the three levels.

A relatively new option for the religious voter is the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan. The TLP made an impressive debut in the 2018 elections when it first entered the electoral arena. The party polled close to 2.2 million votes in these elections. The bulk of its voters came from urban Punjab where it secured almost 1.9 million votes. The party has maintained its focus on mobilisation around the issue of blasphemy and the finality of the prophethood that proved to be an effective strategy in winning support from urban and peri-urban lower middle class voters. In the 2024 elections, the TLP is attempting to cement its credentials as a major party by contesting more than 200 constituencies, more than the PPP and the PML-N.

Women make up roughly half of Pakistan’s population. Yet the voting record reflects a serious gender gap. Academic research such as work by Ali Cheema and his colleagues points to women’s exclusion from political networks; gender gaps in resources; and political engagement as key explanatory factors in this regard. In the 2018 election, the gender voting gap in Pakistan stood at an astounding 11 million. Such a massive gender gap poses serious questions about equal political representation.

During the last five years, the number of female registered voters has increased rapidly. By September 2023, the gender registered voter gap was down to 7.9 percent, almost equal to the historic low achieved in 2002 elections when the gap stood at 7.6 percent. Measures such as NADRA’s dispatch of mobile vans to issue identity cards to women in remote areas of the country reflect the efforts made in this regard. The 2013 elections were the first time in Pakistan’s voting history when women votes were separately counted. This was then adopted as a regular practice in the 2018 elections. Separate counting of women’s votes provides a clear indication of women voter turnout at each polling station, constituency, district and country.

According to the PILDAT, an estimated 3.5 million eligible women remain unregistered as voters. Unlike ethnic and religious voting categories, Pakistan does not provide any political party that specialises in women’s issues and grievances. Does the category of women voters carry an explanatory potential? Or is women’s vote a mere extension of male voting patterns, given the familial ties, especially in marginalised areas?

The historic pattern of voting in Pakistan reflects impact of general as well as specific aspirations and anxieties of various sections of the populace. Will various controversies surrounding the pre-poll process dampen the voter’s spirits? Will the Pakistani voters spring a surprise on February 8? Can, for example, the PTI voters come out in greater numbers than expected? Can the JI attract a larger number of voters than it has traditionally managed to win over given its loss of mass appeal in recent decades at one end and its revival of a kind through adoption of a non-ideological electoral message on the other?

Will the PPP’s share of votes in Sindh decline, thereby potentially reducing the number of its seats in the Sindh Assembly and eventually in terms of government formation in Karachi? Alternatively, can the PPP make a dent in the Punjab by attracting the disgruntled PTI voters in some constituencies and reviving the populist appeal of the Bhutto dynasty? Can the TLP expand its appeal on the Barelvi ticket?

The writer is the director of the Political Science programme at Lahore University of Management Sciences. She is the author of In Search of Lost Glory: Sindhi Nationalism in Pakistan (Hurst Publishers, 2021)