Not just a swing: Scale sets Kerala poll verdict apart

THe Congress-led-United popular face (UDF) has returned to force in Kerala with a decisive mandatory, winning 102 of the 140 assemblage seats. Meanwhile, the incumbent CPI(M) led Left Democratic Front (LDF) has been reduced to 35 seats, its worst performance in the state. The BJP-led NDA has won three seats, its best-ever tally in Kerala. What explains the results?First, and foremost, they suggest that the UDF’s gains in the 2024 parliamentary election and the 2025 local body polls were not temporary and were part of a larger anti-incumbency wave. They have now carried into the Assembly election. In 2024, the UDF won 18 of Kerala’s 20 Lok Sabha seats, while the LDF was reduced to just one seat and the BJP won its first Lok Sabha seat from the state in Thrissur. The UDF then emerged as the largest alliance by vote share in the 2025 local body polls, getting 42.4% of the statewide vote against the LDF’s 35.2%. To be sure, the UDF was ahead of the LDF even in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, but the latter had managed to bounce back in assembly elections. 2026 has ended this state-level premium for the LDF.At 37.6% the LDF has marginally improved its vote share from the 2024 parliamentary and 2025 local body levels, but not enough to reverse the UDF’s lead. The UDF’s Assembly vote share is ahead of the LDF in all regions of the state, at 46.4% in central Kerala, 48.4% in north Kerala and 44.1% in south Kerala. More importantly, the UDF has improved on its 2025 local body vote share in every region, showing that it effectively consolidated the momentum from 2024 and 2025. The scale of the defeat is what makes this election different from an ordinary Kerala swing. The LDF’s vote share has fallen to 37.6%, below even its 43.4% vote share in the 2001 election, which was its previous worst since 1980 elections. Its seat share has fallen to 25%, in the 140-member assembly. That is worse than 2001, when the LDF won 40 seats and the UDF won 99. What makes the 2026 result politically more damaging is that the LDF’s decline is not confined to swing seats and are visible in party strongholds as well. The rout has also been severe at the ministerial level. Thirteen sitting ministers from the LDF government have lost, underlining how the anti-incumbency cut through the government’s senior ranks. The LDF has also failed to retain 36 out of the 59 of the ACs which it had won in 2011, 2016 and 2021 assembly elections.In Kannur district, a traditional bastion of the CPI(M), Payyannur was won by V. Kunhikrishnan, an expelled party leader contesting as a UDF-backed Independent defeating the sitting MLA TI Madhusoodanan. Furthermore, Taliparamba was won by another former CPI(M) leader turned UDF-backed independent TK Govindan Master. Meanwhile, G Sudhakaran, a veteran CPI(M) leader, two-time minister and four-time MLA, who ended his 63-year association with the party in March and contested from Ambalappuzha as an Independent has won. Sudhakaran had represented the seat in 2006, 2011 and 2016. Even in seats they have won, CPIM’s winning margin has seen a decline from median winning percentage of 10.46% in 2021 to 6.96% in this election—Pinarayi Vijayan himself saw his margin fall from 50,123 to 18,437, a 9.7 percentage point decline in terms of vote share. These results underline a two-fold crisis for the LDF and the CPI (M): anti-incumbency against the government and the discontent that had built up within the party’s own ranks.The BJP-led NDA has also made its strongest Assembly showing in Kerala. The BJP has won three seats, its highest tally in the state’s electoral history. The three seats are Nemom, Kazhakoottam and Chathannoor. At 14.2%, the NDA’s vote share is also the highest it has recorded in a Kerala Assembly election, improving on 11.3% in 2021 and 10.5% in 2016. The symbolism of Nemom is important.It was the seat where O Rajagopal opened the BJP’s account in the Kerala Assembly in 2016, before the party lost it to CPIM’s V Sivankutty in 2021. Rajeev Chandrasekhar’s win therefore marks the BJP’s return to its most important Assembly foothold in the state. Chathannoor and Kazhakoottam add to this, showing that the NDA has been able to convert pockets of strength in southern Kerala into seats. Yet the larger vote-share picture is more modest than the seat tally suggests. The NDA has not matched the support it received in the 2024 parliamentary election, when it won 19.2% of the vote in Kerala and secured its first Lok Sabha seat from the state in Thrissur. Its 2026 Assembly vote share is also slightly lower than the 15% it received in the 2025 local body polls. This suggests that the BJP’s gains have been geographically concentrated, rather than a state-wide surge. What remains to be seen is whether the CPI (M) can bounce back from its current predicament or the BJP gains from the rude shock to it and a strong Muslim polarisation behind the Congress.