A game of votes: Some interesting stats about Pakistan's General Elections 2018

With additional input by Usman Afzal Minhas.

The Election 2018 results data includes all but 9 constituencies at the National level. Analysis has only been performed on National Assembly seats.

Some important definitions:

1. Turnout: Turnout is the percentage of total polled votes out of total registered votes, higher is good, lower is bad


2. Rejection: Rejection is the percentage of total rejected votes out of total polled votes, lower is good, higher is bad


3. Stars: Observations that are in the top 10th percentile (90th percentile and above) of the population dataset


4. Problematics: Observations that are in the bottom 10th percentile (10th percentile and below) of the population dataset


5. Poll %: Percentage of votes received to party or candidate out of total polled votes


6. Pop %: Percentage of votes received to party or candidate out of total registered votes


7. Seat %: Percentage of NA seats won out of total seats

Some important assumptions for statistical testing:

The population dataset for Turnout and Rejection percentages is assumed to follow a normal distribution at both the NA level and city level analysis. Turnout was found to be moderately skewed to the left and Rejection was found to be moderately skewed to the right, however for sake of simplicity we can ignore the skewness and assume a normal distribution.



Hover over each dot for constituency details.

Problematic Turnouts

Constituencies with lowest turn outs in Pakistan.

Star Turnouts

Constituencies with highest turn outs in Pakistan.

Problematic Rejections

Constituencies with highest rejected votes in Pakistan.

Star Rejections

Constituencies with lowest rejected votes in Pakistan.

Province Wise Analysis

National average of Turnout was 51.8% and Rejection was 3.1%. All provinces other than Punjab had lower Turnout and higher Rejection than the National average. Sindh was close to National average in Turnout and KPK was close to National average in Rejection.

City Wise Analysis

In the top 10 cities, Karachi had the worst Turnout (40.1%) whereas Muzaffargarh had the worst Rejection (3.6%).

Top 10 Parties in Pakistan

PTI remains the most popular party with 30.9% of polled votes going to their camp resulting in a 43% representation in the parliament. PMLN stands at 23.7% for both Poll % and Seat %. Independents showed a high Poll % depicting high popularity but could only win 4.8% of seats in the parliament.

Most Popular Candidate - Candidates with Highest % of Polled Votes

Effect of TLP on PMLN

(What if PMLN got 60% of TLP votes and PTI got 40% of TLP Votes)

There seems to be a lot of controversy regarding TLP and it's effect on PMLN's vote bank. According to the stats, if most (60%) of TLP voters had voted for PMLN, PMLN would have won 5 extra seats.

Effect of rejected votes on PMLN

(What if PMLN got 60% of rejected votes and PTI got 40% of rejected Votes)

There also seems to be a lot of controversy regarding rejected votes and it's effect on PMLN's vote bank. According to the stats, if most (60%) of rejected voters had voted for PMLN, PMLN would have won 2 extra seats.

Effect of rejected votes on PTI

(What if PTI got 60% of rejected votes and PMLN got 40% of rejected Votes)

On the other hand, according to the stats, if most (60%) of rejected voters had voted for PTI, PTI would have won 3 extra seats.