More men than women drove the increase in voter turnout in the 2015 Assembly elections in the Capital, and the gender gap among voters widened slightly, an analysis of data shows.
According to numbers released by the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer on Sunday, 6.36 lakh more men voted in 2015 than in 2013. For women, the increase was 4.71 lakh voters. So while the male voter turnout was 67.64 per cent, for women it was 66.5 per cent.
As a result, the gender gap among Delhi’s voters, which has been narrowing over the years, widened slightly again. In the 2013 elections, the difference between male and female voter turnouts fell to its lowest ever level, declining from a difference of 1.72 percentage points in 2008 to just 0.89 percentage points in 2013. In Saturday’s election, this gap widened slightly at 1.14 percentage points.
The gender ratio of the electorate people registered to vote is 802 women voters for every 1,000 male voters, one of the country’s worst gender ratios. The gender ratio of voters in 2015 was even worse; just 788 women voted for every 1,000 men who voted. Both numbers are more adverse than Delhi’s adult sex ratio — 868 female for every 1,000 males — showing that women are disproportionately disenfranchised. Delhi Cantonment had the lowest voter turnout for both men and women — 57 per cent for men, and 61 per cent for women.
