Introduction to the series on Gallup Pakistan Electoral Repository
Gallup and Gilani Electoral History (1970-2020) is including GB in its datasets beginning with its first GB wide election held in 2009. This press release is part of a special press release that aims to provide the readers interesting findings from Gallup Pakistan’s electoral database. The press releases, as part of this program, are geared towards academics and policy makers as well as voters for the next general and provincial elections. For more information on the program please contact Gallup Pakistan (isb@gallup.com.pk).
Absract:
This particular press release provides an overview of trends that have been witnessed in the elections of Gilgit Baltistan. The focus of this press release will be on the performance of the winning parties in the past three elections of GB.
Some of the issues explored in the report based on the electoral data base are as follows :
1/ How big was the electorate size in GB
2/ How many seats and how are they spread across the geography of GB
3/ Historical elections and their seat position
4/ Historical elections and their vote position (% of votes won by major parties)
5/ Division and district wise analysis of seats won and lost in the 3 elections conducted in GB
Key learnings from the report
1/ GB Elections followed the same process as in the national and provincial assemblies of Pakistan. However, the difference in the size of the electorate has to be kept in view. An average constituency in Pakistan’s National election is almost the size of the entire electoral contest in the GB elections.
2/ PTI as a party with government did not perform as well as previous winning parties; PML-N won 14 seats in 2015, PPP won 13 seats in 2009 whereas PTI won just 9 seats in the 2020 elections of Gilgit Baltistan
3/ In terms of vote % as per the provisional results , the share of Independants in seats and votes has almost doubled. Vote % for independants was 15% in 2015 which has now increased to 27%. Similarly seats to independants have increased by 100% rising from 3 in 2015 to 6/7 as per provisional results available.
4/ PPP has gained 6% votes since 2015 elections , PMLN has lost almost 23% votes shedding nearly 2 in 3 of its earlier voters. However the winner of a previous election shedding votes in the next election is not new. PPP shed almost similar proportion of votes between 2009 and 2015.
5/ Provisional voter turnout suggests that voter turnout in the current election may have been very similar to the elections in 2015 election but higher than 2009 election.
6/ In Gilgit division of Gilgit Baltistan having 41% of voters and 36% of seats, PPP had 30% votes but had 2 seats. However, PTI had 19% votes and won 3 seats. That is a very major difference in vote vs seat which is entirely possible but very rare.
7/ PML-N performance was best in Diamer Division where it received almost a quarter of all votes casted; however, PTI received almost 1 in 3 of all casted votes while PML-N performance was worst in Gilgit where it got around 8% of all casted votes.
8/ In Baltistan division, PPP + PML-N vote combined leads to a draw with PTI. In Diamer, PPP+ PML-N combined still has PTI winning. In Gilgit, PPP+PML-N is significant lead in popular vote vs PTI. Having said this, PPP and PML-N in GB may have lead to many voters of either side stay home.
