The voter turnout among overseas Indians declined from 25.64% in the 2019 Lok Sabha election to 2.47% in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, showed an analysis of data uploaded by the Election Commission earlier this week.

For this year’s Lok Sabha election, there were 1,19,374 overseas registered voters, out of whom only 2,958 exercised their franchise. In 2019, the number of overseas registered voters was 99,844, out of whom 25,606 cast their ballots.

The vast majority of registered electors living abroad in both 2019 and 2024 were from Kerala.

In 2024, only 2,670 out of 89,839 voters from Kerala living abroad – or only 2.97% – voted in the parliamentary election. The corresponding figure for 2019 was 29.13%, as 25,534 out of 87,651 overseas electors from the southern state turned up to vote.

On the other hand, the turnout among overseas Indians from Andhra Pradesh improved this year. In the 2024 election, 195 out of 7,927 voters exercised their franchise, as against five out of 5,090 in 2019.

Overseas electors can vote in elections, provided they are citizens of India, have not acquired the citizenship of any other country, and are otherwise eligible to be registered.

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance won this year’s Lok Sabha election, albeit with a significantly reduced margin. The alliance won 293 seats, and the BJP was not able to cross the halfway mark on its own.

The Opposition INDIA coalition won 234 seats, higher than what was forecast by most exit polls.