In a cinematic twist that stunned almost every pollster, analyst, and political veteran in the state, Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) – three years old, led by a film star, and written off as a romantic long shot – emerged as the single largest party in Tamil Nadu, edging out the incumbent Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and pushing All-India Anna DMK (AIADMK) to third place. Party founder and screen idol C Joseph Vijay is set to become the chief minister, a climax for the political debutant that could rival his biggest box office blockbusters.
What fell on counting day was not just a government. It was the Dravidian duopoly that had governed Tamil Nadu's political landscape for over five decades. That duopoly, the very grammar of the state's politics, has now been torn up by the electorate.
At 8 pm on counting day, Chief Minister MK Stalin conceded defeat, writing in a post on X that he was bowing to the people’s verdict, and congratulated the winners.
By then, TVK had bagged 105 seats, including leads, and a vote share of 35%, a surge that shows voters across the state wouldn't settle for anything less than change with a capital C. However, to form the government on its own, the TVK has to cross 118, the halfway mark in the 234-member TN assembly.
Falling a few seats short, TVK, which had shunned pre-poll alliances and went solo in all 234 seats, will now have to seek support from other parties to form the government. All eyes are now on which of the smaller parties like the Congress, Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) and the Left would extend support to TVK, enabling Vijay to become CM.
The DMK which had swept the state in 2021 with a tally of 133 seats and a vote share of 37.7%, saw its tally shrink to 60 seats (including leads), as of 9 pm on May 4. With 47 seats, the AIADMK, which contested in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party, was reduced to third place.
“Thalapathy” (commander) to his fans, Vijay won both the seats he contested, Perambur and Tiruchirappalli East, even as a number of DMK stalwarts bit the dust, including Stalin and IT Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan. TVK’s big wins include the likes of party general secretaries N (“Bussy”) Anand, Aadhav Arjuna and Arunraj KG and former AIADMK leader Sengottaiyan KA, but the biggest upset was scripted by TVK candidate VS Babu, who defeated the sitting chief minister in Kolathur.
The TVK was considered to enjoy widespread favour among young voters, women and voters who wanted a change from the two Dravidian majors who have dominated the state’s political landscape for decades. The sweeping victory, however, indicates that the party drew support across age groups and genders and benefited from anti-incumbency sentiments, too. The party saw big wins in western Tamil Nadu, considered an AIADMK stronghold, and the Greater Chennai region, eating into the urban votebase of the DMK. Axis My India was the only pollster that had predicted a TVK surge, correctly identifying what the voter wanted.
Over the years, Tamil Nadu has seen multiple matinee idols try to extend their box office success to the ballot box, with mixed results. The last star before Vijay to make the attempt was Kamal Haasan but his party, Makkal Needhi Maiam, failed to win a single seat in the 2021 Assembly elections. Before that,the late actor-poltician Vijayakanth succeeded in making a dent in Tamil Nadu’s political equations in 2006 by garnering a vote share of 8% in an election where no single party crossed the majority mark. His party, the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) contested all 234 Assembly seats and ate into the vote share of DMK and AIADMK but its sole win came from Vijayakanth. The scale of Vijay’s victory has closer parallels with AIADMK’s electoral debut in 1977, when it was steered by another screen icon, former chief minister MGR. But unlike Vijay, MGR was not a political newbie at the time, having been a part of DMK before he broke away.
The last time a single party failed to get a clear majority in Tamil Nadu was in 2006, when the DMK-led prepoll alliance got majority but not the party on its own, and then in 1952, before the formation of the linguistic state of Tamil Nadu, when it was still Madras State, when the Indian National Congress won 152 seats, making it the largest party in the 375-member Assembly and C Rajagopalachari became the chief minister, a consensus candidate.
It’s not just the DMK which was delivered a shocking blow by TVK. This election was also a do-or-die poll battle for AIADMK under former CM Edappadi Palaniswami, but the party has been relegated to third place. Its tally of 47 is a dip from 2021, when it had won 66 seats, with a vote share of 33.29%. Its ally, the BJP which has been struggling to make inroads in the state, won a lone seat (Udhagamandalam) of the 27 it contested. Prominent losses include that of Nainar Nagenthran, the state BJP president, who contested from Sattur.
Among the parties the TVK could strike a post-poll alliance with, support from the Congress will rekindle friction between the DMK and state Congress leaders. When seat-sharing talks began a few months before the polls, a section of Tamil Nadu Congress leaders pushed for power-sharing as well, but the DMK did not relent. As The News Minute reported in Powertrip at the time, the demand was largely driven by Virudhunagar MP Manickam Tagore and All India Professionals Congress chairman Praveen Chakravarty.
Sources told TNM that Congress has been in talks with TVK over the last three days, parleys that will only intensify now. Other permutations and combinations are also being talked about, as TNM wrote here. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had both congratulated Vijay on his impressive showing.
But whatever be the final form the ruling alliance in Tamil Nadu will take, its leader will undisputedly be the first-time contender who has created history: Vijay.
