Low voter turnout blunts Nigeria’s largest voting bloc

Low voter turnout reduced Nigeria’s largest voting bloc and PDP stronghold, the Bible Belt, to the least effective bloc at the 2019 election.
Despite having the highest number of registered voters at 34.5 million, the Bible Belt’s actual votes came to 9.6 million due to a low voter turnout of 28 percent.

The low turnout in the Bible Belt paved the way for the Northern Alliance, which had less registered voters (25 million) but higher turnout of 41 percent to overtake the Bible Belt in terms of number of -15.7% votes for the first time since 1999.

The Northern Alliance states accounted for 10.3 million votes, slightly over a million votes more than the Bible Belt states.

Read also: The curious case of Nigeria’s lowest voter turnout since 1999

The Rockies, with 6.6 million votes and 24 million registered voters, also paid the price of low voter turnout which at 27 percent was the lowest of all three voting blocs.

“The Bible belt, even with its low turnout always put out more votes than the Northern Alliance. But it’s been getting closer and closer until 2019 when it actually turned the other way,” Ejobe said.
“If the turnout in the Bible Belt was anything like that of the Northern Alliance, PDP would win every election in Nigeria every single time, and we would become a one-party State,” Ejobe added.

That’s without factoring the minimum requirement for a candidate to win two-thirds of votes in every state to become president.
“But both major parties achieved that every single time with ease, but this turnout would simply kill and destroy every single other. Nobody would have any say,” Jiro said.