What does Bengal’s Extraordinarily High Voter Turnout Tell?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi sounds ecstatic. To him, the extraordinarily high voter turnout in the first phase of West Bengal assembly elections 2026 was a clear indication of the winds of change blowing strong. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was no less confident that the turnout signals her party will get a sweeping mandate.

In the 294-seat state assembly, 148 is the majority mark. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 77 seats in 2021 assembly elections and led in 90 assembly segments in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. This means, they, indeed, need a strong ‘wind’ to sail through.

As per data the Election Commission of India (ECI) released late in the evening on the poll day, Bengal recorded a polling rate of 91.78%, a historic high. This excluded updated data from 6,345 or roughly 14% of the 44,376 polling stations in the first phase.

The ECI did not provide any update on the data for the next 24 hours, but most political parties expect the share to stay around the 92% mark.

Bengal’s political observers did not share Modi or Banerjee’s excitement for this record turnout. Many of them had expected a voter turnout above 90% for two reasons.

First, the state’s electorate has shrunk by 11%—from 7.66 crore, it has come down to 6.82 crore. Similar turnout in a shrunken electorate spikes up the polling rate. For example, in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the state had 7.6 crore voters. Of them, 6.05 crore (79.55%) turned up to vote. Now, if 6.05 crore people vote again, the polling percentage will stand at 88.85% of the new electorate, 6.82 crore.

If we look at the past three major election trends, roughly 1.3 to 1.5 crore of the state’s electorate did not vote. Many of these inactive voters were dead and migrants and were removed during the first phase of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll when roughly 64 lakh names were deleted. Therefore, the share of active voters increased in the new voter roll.

Besides, the mass deletion of voters, especially 27 lakh names for what the ECI called having ‘logical discrepancies’ in their records, has created widespread panic. Many believe their names might be struck off the roll if they do not vote this time. Some just want to see for themselves that their names are on the roll at the polling station.

The state has lost 84 lakh voters. Roughly 64 lakh deleted as dead, migrant and duplicate voters and 27 lakh removed for logical discrepancies caught in tribunals. About seven lakh were added as new voters. Senior BJP leaders, including Union home minister Amit Shah, have repeatedly said that those whose names have been removed will be deported, except, of course, the Hindus.

However, not every Hindu feels assured. Muslims are in real panic. This has evidently prompted many other ‘sleeping voters’—who usually do not take the trouble to go to the polling station, especially if it means any hardship—to make sure they vote this time. The waiting lists for Bengal-bound trains are getting longer. Migrant workers are booking buses.

“Just look at how the fares for Kolkata-bound fights have skyrocketed. This shows people’s desperation for returning to the state to vote,” says Mayukh Biswas, a CPI (M) candidate from Kolkata’s northern suburbs.

Considering that 91.8% of the 3.6 crore electorate in the first phase voted, the polling in absolute numbers should be around 3.3 crore.

Voter turnout data for the 152 assembly constituencies that voted in the first phase shows that in the 2021 assembly election, these seats recorded about 3.2 crore votes. At that time, the electorate in these seats stood at about 3.78 crore.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, despite a slightly larger electorate (3.95 crore), the cumulative voter turnout in these 152 assembly segments stood at 3.17 crore votes (roughly 80.25%).

This means, the 2026 assembly election’s first phase has witnessed roughly 10-12 lakh more actual polling in absolute numbers despite a shrunken electorate compared to both previous elections.

Now, consider that of the 27 lakh voters disallowed to vote this year for ‘logical discrepancies’, about 15 lakh are from these constituencies. Most of them can be considered active voters, as they have disputed the deletions.

So, effectively, about 20-25 lakh more people—who are not the usual voters—many have turned up at the polling stations this year in the first phase alone. This can be seen as the ‘awakening of the sleeping voters’—voters who prioritised exercising their democratic rights this time.

Will these reluctant or ‘sleeping’ voters be the X factor in the SIR-complicated Bengal elections?

A senior Bengal BJP leader argues that the ECI’s strong measures have emboldened anti-TMC voters to come out in greater numbers. “Just listen to the whispers. You’ll know,” the leader says.

Congress leader Prasenjit Bose thinks otherwise. According to him the increase in polling rate is clearly attributable to heightened concerns within the electorate regarding their right to vote.

“It is unlikely that West Bengal voters who have already cast their votes, or are going to vote on April 29, would favour the ECI’s SIR and the PM’s party, which is threatening to ‘detect, delete and deport’ voters excluded under SIR,” Bose says.

Whether the second phase--in the state's more urbanised areas--shows any different trend remains to be seen, though.