Bihar witnessed a record-breaking voter turnout of 64.66 percent in the first phase of the 2025 Assembly elections: the highest in the state’s history.
Previously, the highest turnout for an Assembly election in Bihar was 62.57 percent in 2000. In comparison, the highest voter turnout for a Lok Sabha election in the state was 64.6 percent in 1998. The Election Commission, in a post on X (formerly Twitter), expressed gratitude to the voters, "Thank you for your enthusiastic participation in the first phase of the Bihar Assembly Elections 2025."
Previous records of voter turnouts
This high surge in voter turnout holds added significance given the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter rolls, as an attempt to exclude voters from marginalized and economically weaker groups, who they claim form their traditional vote base. The revision exercise reportedly removed 47 lakh names from the voter list.
As a result, Bihar’s total voter base declined from 7.89 crore to 7.42 crore. This reduction could partly explain the higher turnout percentage, provided the actual number of voters remained constant.
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In the 2010 Assembly elections, Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party, secured a sweeping victory with a voter turnout of 52.73 percent, as the JDU alone won 115 seats.
Ahead of the 2015 elections, Kumar switched sides to join long-time rival Lalu Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal. The voter turnout that year rose by 4.18 percent, and the Kumar-Yadav coalition emerged victorious.
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Five years later, Kumar once again allied with the BJP, leading the alliance to another win. However, the JDU lost 28 seats and had to accept the role of a junior partner despite the overall turnout climbing to 57.29 percent; 0.38 percent higher than the previous election.
In comparison, turnout in the first phase of the 2025 polls is 7.37 percent higher than the overall turnout in 2020 and 8.46 percent greater than the first phase that year, which recorded 56.2 percent.
The effects of the revised voter lists and the deletion of 47 lakh names will also play a key role in understanding these figures.
This was only the first of two phases: 121 out of 243 seats went to polls today. The remaining 122 constituencies will vote on November 11, and the results will be declared on November 14.
