The Bhutanese Leading the way.
While Bhutan has just completed it second general elections for the National Assembly, the paper takes a look at the historic March 2008 general elections.
Compared to 381,790 registered voters in 2013, there were 318,465 registered voters in 2008. The increase in number of voters is mainly on account of young voters who have come into the voting age.
There were 865 polling stations in 2008, and around 850 in the 2013 elections.
The International Media presence in the 2008 elections was stronger with 71 international media agencies with 124 media personnel.
In 2008, the DPT had relatively younger and less experienced candidates than the PDP in 2008.
A total of 252,672 votes were cast in 2008 of which 235,553 were electronic voting machine (EVM) votes and 17119 were postal ballot votes.
On March 24, as per the results, DPT secured 67.02% of the votes and PDP secured 32.9 8% of the votes. In the EVM DPT secured 66.2% while PDP secured 33.8% and in the postal ballot, DPT secured 77.8% and PDP secured 22.2% of the ballots.
0f the total votes cast postal ballots constituted 6.8% and EVM votes constituted 93.2%.
DPT in 2008 had won a landslide victory winning 45 of the 47 seats in the parliament. PDP won only seats which were Tshering Tobgay in Sombaykha and Damcho Dorji in Goenkhatoe-Laya constituency.
Among the districts, Gasa had the lowest registered voters at 1557, but it had the highest voter turnout at 90.6 percent.
Samtse had the highest registered voters at 34958 voters. Zhemgang district had the lowest voter turnout at 64.7 percent.
DPT won more than 60 percent of the votes in 32 constituencies and in the remaining 15 constituencies they got 40% to 60% of the votes.
In two constituencies, the DPT lost the percentage of vote difference was less than 1 percent in Goenkhatoe-Laya and 18 percent in Sombaykha. DPT saw its biggest sweep in Khar-Yurung and Nganglam constituency where it secured more than 90 percent of the votes cast.
It is interesting to note that in 2008, PDP could not secure a single majority in all the 47 constituencies in terms of postal ballots.
In the DPT president Jigmi Y Thinley’s constituency, he had secured 4109 votes compared to his rival Jigme Dukpa who had got 907 votes.
In the case of the PDP president Sangay Ngedup, it was a closer race with him securing 2729 votes compared to his rival Tshering Penjore who got 3109 votes.
In terms of male and female turn out, the female turnout was higher with 51.8 % of the votes cast by female voters compared to 4 8.2% of the male voters.
In terms of an age break up the highest voter turnout was in the age category of 31 to 40 and 18 to 24 years with the lowest turnout in the elderly group.
