Millions of Pakistani voters have cast their ballots in a general election beset by allegations of military interference and scarred by the deaths of at least 31 people in a suicide attack outside a polling station in the eastern city of Quetta.



After a bloody campaign during which 151 people were killed a fortnight ago in Pakistan’s second deadliest terrorist attack, on Wednesday a militant blew himself up hours after polls opened.

The national vote was seen as a two-horse race between the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), a long-established party that has been in power for the past five years, and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), formed by the former cricketer Imran Khan to try to break open the nation’s hidebound politics.

About 106 million registered voters had the chance to take part in what will be only the second transfer of power from one civilian government to another in the country’s coup-studded 71-year history. Polls closed at 6pm local time.

The campaign was hit by claims from human rights groups, political leaders from several parties and from media organisations of interference by the army. The PML-N claimed the military was favouring the PTI because the former PML-N prime minister Nawaz Sharif had tried to curb the military’s power before he was ousted in a supreme court ruling last July.

Rough exit polls by Gallup and Roshan indicated the PTI was marginally ahead of the PML-N. Roshan had the PTI three points up, on 29% nationwide, figures that Gallup said came “quite close” to its own findings.

Outside a polling station in Islamabad, Samir Zahid told the Guardian he had voted for Khan to end “rampant corruption” in Pakistan. “He brought us the cricket World Cup, Shaukat Khanum hospital. 100% he will fulfil his promises,” the 22-year-old said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Security personnel at the scene of the suicide attack in Quetta. Photograph: Banaras Khan/AFP/Getty Images

At a plastic table at a street-side cafe, Muhammad Junaid, 20, showed the Guardian an ink stain on his thumb and said he had voted for Khan as the other parties had failed to meet expectations.

“We have tried all the others,” he said, a common refrain. His friend Muhammad Salman, also 20, said Khan was certain to win, helped by a generation of young supporters who had been unable to cast a vote in 2013.

Muhammad Ali, a PML-N voter, said the “establishment” was interfering in the vote because Sharif had “refused to salute them” while in office.

The election commission censured Khan on Wednesday for making a political speech after casting his vote in Islamabad, breaking a ban on campaigning.

During the 20-minute address, Khan called Sharif an agent of Pakistan’s old enemy India. Other leaders also gave speeches in contravention of the ban.

There were anecdotal reports of low turnout at polling stations, and Geo News reported that numbers were down 5% in the crucial province of Punjab.

Nearly 400,000 soldiers were stationed inside and outside the country’s 89,500 polling stations, a startling rise on 2013 when only a fifth of that number were deployed despite a far graver security situation.



Allegations of polling day interference surfaced mainly in the tribal region of North Waziristan, where Mohsin Dawar, a leader of the Pashtun Protection Movement (PTM), an anti-military civil rights group, was standing as an independent candidate.

“These are not elections but selections” said one supporter in a video clip shared on social media. The supporter claimed soldiers had barred Dawar voters from entering the booths.

Women in the highly conservative northern regions of Dir, Kohistan and Waziristan voted for the first time in decades, and photographs of long queues of women in burqas drew widespread celebration.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Women queue to cast their vote in Lahore. Photograph: Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images

Whoever forms the next government will have to deal with a deteriorating economy. The rupee has slid in value over the past few months, and Pakistan may have to seek a bailout from the IMF, which could lead to austerity measures.

At midnight on Monday the leaders of all political parties suspended campaigning, in compliance with election rules. Both Khan and Shehbaz Sharif, the brother of Nawaz, who has assumed the position of PML-N chairman, concluded by hammering home their key campaign messages in Punjab, which returns 141 of the 272 seats in the national assembly.

Khan hurried between five rallies in Lahore, the capital of the province. He attacked the Sharif family and blamed the poor state of public services on their corruption. “Where did your money go if it was not spent on you? It went to London,” he told supporters.

Sharif argued that the PML-N had delivered for Pakistan, fixing energy shortages that had previously led to day-long blackouts. He sought to generate sympathy for his brother, saying he now had to use a “dirty washroom” and was being denied urgent medical attention.

Khan’s chances of making the necessary inroads in Punjab, where the PTI won only a handful of seats in 2013, have improved after his recruitment of politicians seen as more electable. These long-in-the-tooth, fickle politicians brought with them vote banks but also criticism that the PTI had lost sight of its anti-corruption agenda. Several joined because of Khan’s public defence of Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws, which mandate the death penalty.

The historically liberal Pakistan Peoples party (PPP) has faded outside of its strongholds in the province of Sindh, but its 29-year-old leader, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, fought a widely praised campaign that has invigorated supporters. With a coalition government on the cards, the PPP may well emerge as kingmaker.

Early reports suggested far-right Islamist parties could make historic gains after they drew unprecedented large crowds at their closing rallies. Tehreek-e-Labbaik, a new party founded solely to promote the death of blasphemers, was fielding almost as many candidates in Punjab as the established political outfits.