The final turnout of the Delhi Assembly elections on Wednesday is expected to be more than that in 2020, with 57.7 per cent casting their votes by 5pm, an hour before the polls closed.

Most exit polls predicted a BJP win in the capital. The AAP and the Congress contested all 70 seats on their own, and the BJP allotted a seat each to the JDU and Chirag Paswan’s faction of the LJP. In 2020, the turnout was 62.55 per cent. Voters in queue till 6pm are allowed to vote.

Earlier in the day, it was AAP versus election and police officers on X with the party raising repeated complaints of poll-code violations and the officials dismissing most of them.

AAP leaders uploaded videos of verbal confrontations with BJP workers. In one video, MP Sanjay Singh is seen chasing a car from which cash was being purportedly distributed among voters. AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal posted on X: “Delhi’s progress must not stop. Hooliganism will lose, Delhi will win.”

Alka Narula, a 65-year-old woman who was the first voter at her booth in South Delhi’s Malviya Nagar, told The Telegraph: “Some politicians are corrupt, some good. All parties make money on the side. I vote for those who can work the best.”

Narula summed up the zeitgeist of the capital that has given the AAP overwhelming victories in the last two Assembly polls over its anti-corruption stance but now sees it as any other party. Kejriwal has tried to fight this election as a mandate on the corruption cases against him and his ministers.

Most seats with a large working class and Muslim populations had higher-than-average turnouts. The AAP is banking on its welfare schemes that cater to the poor. The BJP has matched these in their manifesto and advertised the “relief to the middle class” in the latest Union budget.

Sanjay, a taxi driver from Northeast Delhi’s Ghonda, a seat that was hit during the 2020 communal riots, said: “I don’t know if I made a mistake but I voted for the BJP this time. We feel that the AAP favours Muslims. If the BJP does not work well, we can vote for the AAP again next time. They have had two terms, so a change may be good.”

Some WhatsApp groups in more affluent areas of South Delhi had messages from members of the main parties asking people to vote as the turnout was low at noon.

Roshan John, a lawyer in Kalkaji, the seat of chief minister Atishi, said: “There were hardly any voters at my booth at 10am. When I signed the register, I was around the 50th on the list of those who had voted. The roads are bad and the mohalla clinic near my place is surrounded by garbage. But I don’t see any alternative to vote for…. As a person, Atishi is better than BJP’s Ramesh Bidhuri.”

As an MP in 2023, Bidhuri had made bigoted remarks in Parliament against Danish Ali, an MP from Uttar Pradesh’s Amroha.

Most established exit polls predicted a BJP win, giving the party anywhere between 35 and 60 of the 70 seats. The AAP is predicted to get between 32 to 37 seats. Exit polls have overestimated the BJP and underestimated the AAP in the last three Assembly polls.