2024 Sri Lankan Presidential Election
Postal Votes
And why they are interesting
Who gets to vote by post? When are they counted? What proportion of votes are postal votes? Where do postal voters come from? Which party do postal voters support? Are Postal Voting Results Good Bellwethers? Do a lot of postal votes get rejected? Can we use postal votes results to predict the final election outcome?
In Sri Lanka, postal voting allows eligible voters, such as government employees, essential workers, and election staff, to vote if they cannot be present at polling stations on Election Day due to work duties.
To participate, they must apply in advance, and upon approval, they receive a postal ballot package. After marking their vote, they return the ballot by mail or hand delivery before the deadline. Postal votes are verified and counted along with regular ballots.
For the 2024 Sri Lankan Presidential Election, postal votes must be submitted between September 4 and 6, 2024. Additional days, September 11 and 12, 2024, have been allocated for those who are unable to cast their votes during the main postal voting period.
What proportion of votes are postal votes?
During the 2019 Presidential Election, 641,640 valid postal votes were cast, or 4.8% of all valid votes.
This proportion has increased throughout history.
Where do postal voters come from?
Postal votes are aggregated and counted by each of the 22 electoral districts.
In 2019, the highest proportion of postal votes (relative to all valid votes) was from Anuradhapura, with 8.2%, followed by Moneragala, Kurunegala and Badulla. The lowest proportion was in Colombo (2.4%), followed by Puttalam, Gampaha and Nuwara-Eliya.
This ranking has been fairly consistent in recent times.
There haven’t been any extreme deviations in the proportion of postal votes by districts, with the single exception of 2005, when nearly a quarter of all valid votes in the Jaffna Electoral District were postal votes. In the same election, the Kilinochchi Polling Division (part of Jaffna ED) famously had just one vote.
In every Presidential Election except 1988 (when there was no postal voting in Kurunegala, Badulla, Jaffna and the Vanni), Postal Votes were counted in every Electoral District.
Which party do postal voters support?
In every previous Presidential Election, except 1988, the winning candidate Islandwide has matched the winning candidate among postal voters.
That said, the proportion of votes the winning candidate won among postal voters, often diverged significantly, from the proportion won islandwide. It might indicate that postal voters “float” more than voters overall.
1988 was the only instance where postal voters, in aggregate, voted for a losing candidate (Sirimavo Bandaranayake, of the SLFP), but this result might be skewed by the districts that didn’t have postal voting.
Are Postal Voting Results Good Bellwethers?
The postal Voting Results from Kandy, Nuwara-Eliya, Puttalam, Anuradhapura (all 8 out of 8) and Kurunegala (7 out of 7) are Perfect Bellwethers. No candidate has won the presidency without winning these Postal Vote results.
The Postal Voting Result least correlated with the final result is from Jaffna, with the Jaffna Postal Votes result winner matching the Islandwide winner in only 3 out of 7 elections.
Do a lot of postal votes get rejected?
Historically, the proportion of Rejected Votes has been higher in Postal Votes, compared to all votes; in recent years, about 1.4 times more.
Can we use postal votes results to predict the final election outcome?
As I mentioned above, Postal votes are verified and counted along with regular ballots, which happens after polls close on election day. In the case of the 2024 Presidential Election, that will be 4 or 5pm on Saturday, the 21st of September.
Some fake social media content claim that postal votes for 2024 have already been counted, but this is just that — fake.
That said, after polls close on Election Day, and counting begins, very often, postal votes tend to be some of the very first results to be counted. And hence, we can often perform projections of the final result, based on these results.
Did you find these answers interesting? What else would you like to know about Postal Votes in particular, and Elections in general? Comment!
You can also find more information about Postal Voting on the Election Commision website.
The code used for this analysis can be found here:
