It's all the pollsters fault. In some ways, the exit polls in Tamil Nadu changed everyone's perceptions. Until exit polls came out, a relatively fatigued electorate expected Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa's All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam to return to power, but without achieving the dominance it did five years ago. Then May 16 happened and the tables seemed to have turned.
With the exception of CVoter, all the other major polls – not counting a few in the state – said that the M Karunanidhi's Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam would come back to power after five years in the wilderness. In some ways, this would be expected, since Tamil Nadu has religiously swung back and forth between the DMK and AIADMK for the last two decades.
But the exit polls were stills surprising, because Amma's party had such a massive head start over the Opposition. The one wild card was the sudden presence of the Vijayakanth-led People's Welfare Front, a Third Front alliance that was expected to at least challenge the Dravidian majors, and maybe cut enough votes from either side to produce a surprising result.
Although final numbers are not in, two things are clear.
One: The Third Front is barely visible. It is unclear if it cut seats massively since the lead party, the Vijayakanth's Desiya Morpokku Dravida Kazhagam, has managed just 2.2% vote share, down from the 10% it got during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections and the 5% it got during the general elections two years ago. The Left also will, for the first time, not have any Members of Legislative Assembly in Tamil Nadu.
Two: Jayalalithaa has actually lost vote share – down from her massive score (with allies) in assembly polls in 2011 and her almost complete sweep of Lok Sabha seats in the 2014 elections. Yet the norm in Tamil Nadu is to have dramatic swings rather than gradual declines. If the last two decades were anything to go by, the exit poll suggestion of a switch-over to the DMK would have been expected.
Instead, Jayalalithaa battled corruption charges, accusations of inaccessibility, rumours about her health and allegations of not caring about citizens during the Chennai floods, and still managed to get 41.4% of the vote. That is 10% more than the DMK.
That is record breaking, in some ways, because of the see-saw nature of Tamil Nadu's polity. It is the first time any chief minister has been re-elected in the state since MG Rachandran won three terms through the 1984.
Breaking the see-saw DMK-AIADMK cycle is massive, because it is a genuine rupture in the way politics is conducted in the state. Citizens have not seen continuity in a government beyond five years since 1984, and that could alter the relationship between the state and its people. Unfortunately, that could also mean more power is concentrated in the hands of Jayalalithaa, already known for centralising decision-making.
It also adds further focus to the big question about the party that will remain in power in Tamil Nadu: If Amma is no longer there – either because of her health or the corruption case that is set to be heard in the Supreme Court in the first week of June – what happens to the AIADMK?
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