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As Kerala goes to the polling booths on April 26 (Friday) for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the State will have more eligible electors in the 40-49 age bracket than in any other. This is an interesting shift from the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and the 2021 elections to the Kerala Legislative Assembly when the highest number of voters were in the 30-39 age group.
This time, Kerala has a little over 58.73 lakh voters in the 40-49 segment, which has 30.62 lakh women, 28.11 lakh men and 68 transgender electors, indicate the age-wise groupings of the 2.77 crore-strong final electoral roll. The 30-39 age group comes second in numbers with a little over 54.28 lakh voters while the 50-59 segment is in third with just over 51.37 lakh electors.
For the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the State had a little over 57.67 lakh voters in the 30-39 age bracket. The 40-49 age group was second with 55.09 lakh voters. The same was the case with the 2021 Assembly polls. The 30-39 age group had 57.71 lakh voters followed by the 40-49 age bracket with 57.65 lakh voters.
Another interesting element in the electoral roll is the dip in the number of voters in the 18-29 age group. The number has dipped from a little over 52.82 lakh in 2019 and 53.12 lakh in 2021 to just over 50.06 lakh in 2024.
‘Purification’ exercise
Chief Electoral Officer (Kerala) Sanjay Kaul said these changes could be on account of a comprehensive ‘purification’ exercise undertaken by his office to create an error-free voters’ list by removing double entries and the names of individuals who had died or moved away. “People in these age groups tend to be highly mobile in terms of jobs. It’s not necessarily that there is a reduction in the number of people. New voters have also enrolled. It’s more to do with the fact that we have removed names that were not supposed to be there,” Mr. Kaul said.
Overall, the total voter population in Kerala has actually risen to a little over 2.77 crore in 2024 from 2.61 crore in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and 2.74 crore in the 2021 State Assembly elections.
For Friday’s LS polls, first-time voters in the 18-19 age group number 5,34,394. This includes 2,77,084 men, 2,57,288 women and 22 transgender voters. The 2019 LS polls had more first-time voters than in 2024. But the present number is higher than that of the 2021 Assembly polls.
The age-wise division of the Kerala electorate for Friday’s Lok Sabha polls is as follows: 18-19 (5,34,394), 20-29 (44,71,938), 30-39 (54,28,204), 40-49 (58,73,516), 50-59 (51,37,601), 60-69 (37,08,606), 70-79 (19,67,855) and 80-plus (6,27,045).
