Pakistan goes to the polls this week in an exceedingly fraught atmosphere marked by uncertainty about the future. In the country’s 12th general election a record number of 128.5 million voters will decide who forms the next government.

Punjab, of course, has more voters — 73.2m — than those in the other three provinces put together, which makes it the battleground province that will determine the outcome of the national election.

There are 5,113 candidates in the contest for 266 general seats of the 342-member Lower House in the country’s first-past-the-post system. A total number of 12,638 candidates are in the run for assembly seats in the four provinces. There are 313 female contenders for National Assembly seats, the highest ever, but still only 6pc of the total, while 568 female candidates are in the race for provincial assembly seats.

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