Voting in Pakistan’s general elections 2024 concluded as planned at 5 pm on Thursday. Results started pouring in as the seals were removed from ballot boxes. The picture on who will emerge victor is slowly but surely emerging.
The election featured plenty of tough fights as well as landslides. As the clock continues to tick, we see a series of upsets.
Preliminary and unofficial results indicate that independent candidates, most of them backed by PTI, have won victories mainly in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The totalled to 79 by 2am Friday morning, according to an Aaj News tally based on unofficial results.
However, these results are based on vote count held only at a limited number of polling stations. A complete count was still pending.
PMLN and PPP have emerged as two major political parties in the election with nearly 30 national seats each, as PTI technically went out of the game after failing to hold the intra-party election in the manner required by the ECP.
The vote count in 164 national constituencies hardly presents a clear picture of the election.
Initial reports suggested some of the big players had encountered major upsets: Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari lost NA-127 seat to PMLN’s Atta Tarar, JUI-F Chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman lost his home constituency of NA-44 in Dera Ismail Khan to Ali Amin Gandapur, JI’s Sirajul Haq lost to an independent candidate in NA-6 Lower Dir.
PMLN’s KP President Amir Muqam failed to win his NA-2 seat from the Malakand region. The party also lost NA-18 Haripur to Omar Ayub.
PML-N’s Hanif Abbasi faced a tough fight from an independent candidate in Rawalpindi NA-56 and PPP’s Yousaf Raza Gilani was defeated by an independent candidate in Multan’s NA-148 constituency.
The flow of results to newsrooms almost stopped by 2pm Friday. Election rules allow Returning Officers to stop sending results after 2pm and resume their job at 10am the next day.
Lahore is the scene of another tough fight in NA-128, where PTI-backed Salman Akram Raja is taking on Khawaja Saad Rafique.
In Sindh, PMLN’s provincial president Bashir Memon is narrowly leading PPP’s Makhdoom Jamil uz Zaman.
The Election Commission of Pakistan has expressed optimism that the results will be completed and announced on time.
In case you need a constituency-by-constituency detail on who is leading in which constituency, click on the link below to go to our live results page.
If you like a graphical representation, you can head over to the page below to see an interactive map and a parliament donut, showing party-wise breakdowns.
Province-wise results
The traditional party-stronghold patterns continue to persist in the provisional results revealed so far.
Independent candidates are in commanding positions in KP, with some seats being led by JUI or PMLN.
Sindh is also showing signs of PPP dominance once again, with GDA putting up fights in some places.
However, Punjab continues to be a battleground with fierce contests in many places between PTI-backed independent and PMLN candidates.
