General Election, 11 February 2024

On 8 February 2024, Pakistan held general elections after the regularly scheduled five-year term of the previous National Assembly. In Pakistan, voters elect one federal legislator and one provincial legislator. There are 336 seats in the National Assembly, with 60 reserved for women and 10 reserved for non-Muslims, and 749 Provincial Assembly seats, with the election following a first-past-the-post system. The elected National Assembly votes on the prime minister with a simple majority (Shahid 2024 ; IFES 2024; International IDEA 2024a). The electoral management body in Pakistan is the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), made up of a chief election commissioner and a member for each of the country’s four provinces, all of whom serve five-year terms (IFES 2024). 

The day before the election, advertisements targeted the opposition PTI party with an AI voiceover of its leaders—including jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan—calling for PTI supporters to boycott the election (France24 2024). The PTI responded with press announcements that the videos were fake. Other disinformation circulated prior to the election, including posts claiming that the ECP had printed surplus ballots to manipulate the process (Stenson and Farrukh 2024). The ECP refuted the claims by issuing a detailed statement on standard procedures for voting materials, urging voters to watch awareness videos on the ECP website, and promoting the ECP helpline for other questions (Samaa 2024).

On 4 February a grenade was launched at the ECP office in the Nushki district (Akhtar and Khan 2024), one of multiple incidents of election-related violence. Two explosions near candidate offices in Balochistan on 7 February killed 26 people and wounded dozens. In response, the Interior Ministry suspended mobile phone services for security reasons before voting started (Greenfield and Shahzad 2024). “Extraordinary security arrangements” saw deployment of Quick Response Forces and police totaling nearly 700,000 personnel (The News International 2024). On the day of the election, there were multiple bomb blasts killing at least nine people (Hussain 2024).

On election day, voting at 90,675 polling stations officially began at 08:00 and closed at 17:00 – with some extending polling hours until 19:00. Many polling stations had a delayed start due to a lack of polling personnel and long lines (24Digital 2024). The ECP cited internet and administrative issues when explaining, in response to criticism, why announcement of results was delayed into the early hours of the following day (The News International 2024). 

The Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) election observation mission applauded the ECP for organizing such a large election—involving 1.1 million election officials—in a ‘reasonably orderly manner’, and under challenging conditions. However, it stated that the credibility of the process was overshadowed by the delayed results and digital blackout, which undermined years of legal reforms aimed at electoral integrity, efficiency and transparency.  At least 49 per cent of polling stations were missing all necessary reporting paperwork, while the blackout on communications was one of several restrictions hampering FAFEN’s observation efforts themselves (ANFREL 2024; FAFEN 2024).

There was widespread rejection of the results by opposition parties and citizens, again often citing the cutting off of mobile phone service (Turak 2024). Amid the protests the Commonwealth’s observer group, among others, appealed for calm (Commonwealth 2024).

The former Prime Minister’s PTI party won 97 of 265 seats in the National Assembly, making it the largest grouping. Since 134 seats are required for simple majority, no party won enough seats for a coalition (Al Jazeera 2024). 

On 11 February 2024, the ECP announced re-polling at multiple stations due to destroyed or stolen voting materials (Economic Times 2024). The re-polling occurred on 15 February at 53 polling stations (Niazi 2024).

Voter turnout was 47.6 per cent, slightly down on turnout in the 2018 general election which was 50.14 per cent (International IDEA 2024b; ANFREL 2024). It is noted that there was a large turnout among women, youth and people with special needs in the 2024 election (Khan 2024). ANFREL observers noted that most parties did not manage to uphold the legal requirement of nominating at least 5 per cent women candidates (only 30 of 111 parties; 270 women among 6,037 candidates, or 4.6 per cent) (FAFEN 2024). After the election, women held 17 per cent of the elected seats, a significant decrease from 20.5 per cent prior to the election (IPU 2025).