Pakistan, the world’s fifth largest democracy, held its 12th General Election on February 8, 2024, marking the largest mobilization of polling staff and material in the country’s history. Since 2002, the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT) has systematically analysed the entire electoral process for every General Election, using an indigenous scorecard. PILDAT has already issued this scorecard, Assessment of the Quality of the General Election, for 2024.

This Electoral Integrity Report is derived from a framework developed by the Electoral Integrity Project, an international research project based at the Royal Military College of Canada, Queen’s University (Canada), and the University of East Anglia (UK). Using the Perceptions of Electoral Integrity Index (PEI) developed by the EIP, PILDAT’s experts have given their opinion on 49 parameters grouped under 11 key areas for the General Election 2024. Each parameter is a statement that the respondent scores a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is ‘strongly disagree’ and 5 is ‘strongly agree’. We have only examined the scores in their original, unprocessed state. We chose not to replicate the additive scoring and ranking system utilized by the EIP due to its intricate imputations. Any deviation in methodology might lead to erroneous comparisons between our analysis and the EIP’s prior assessments of Pakistani elections of 2013 and 2018.

This assessment is published as part of PILDAT series of analyses and commentaries on fairness and quality of General Elections in Pakistan.