Islamabad (NNP) :In comparison to 8th February general election, polling on 21 April for by-elections was significantly chaotic, marred with widespread complaints of ballot stuffing, and fraudulent practices such as forcing polling agents to sign Form 45s prior to the beginning of polling.
Though the un-official and provisional poll results show victory for the PMLN candidates in most by-elections, the two exist polls we had conducted on 8th February and 21st April show no shift in popularity of PTI and PMLN.
It is extremely worrisome to note that 12% of the respondents of Pattan-Coalition38 exit poll claimed that their polling stations were changed for the by-election without their consent, and 14% respondents claimed that polling agents of PTI-Sunni Itihad were not present inside the polling stations at the time of their voting, while 5% respondents said they didn’t see any polling agents at all in their respective polling stations.
Moreover, about 10% respondents claimed that someone had pressured them to vote against their free will while 12% respondents said they suspected some form of rigging was taking place while they were inside their polling station, 7% reported that they faced some form of difficulty in casting of their vote, and 2% reported that ballot boxes were not present in front of the polling staff which is violation of the requirement under the Elections Act 2017.
Regarding voting behaviour of electorates about 40% respondents of the exit poll said they had voted for PTI-Sunni Itihad candidates, while 25% reported that they voted for PMLN candidates. It appears popularity of two largest parties have not changed since 8th February as the exit polls of 8th February and 21st April show similar popularity in both exit polls. It is worth noting that 83% of the respondents of our exit poll had also voted in the 8th February election.
Pattan-Coalition38 conducted exit poll across all by-election constituencies and conducted interviews while voters were coming out of polling stations after casting their ballots. In each constituency about every 5th exiting voter was interviewed.
