Caste makeup, Dravidian party duopoly dominate TN politics

Politics in Tamil Nadu continues to be dominated by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK)

Published on: Apr 22, 2026, 08:58:52 IST

By Abhishek Jha, Roshan Kishore, Nishant Ranjan

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All of Tamil Nadu’s 234 assembly constituencies will go to polls on Thursday. The election campaign, at least for a week, was overtaken by a debate around delimitation and possible reduction in Tamil Nadu’s share in Lok Sabha seats. While the impact of this on the election results remains to be seen, it gives a useful segue to underline Tamil Nadu’s political exceptionalism vis-à-vis rest of India on other aspects as well. Here are four charts which flag this.

India will count castes other than Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) for the first time in the forthcoming census. (File picture)

Tamil Nadu is overwhelmingly non-upper caste

India will count castes other than Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) for the first time in the forthcoming census. But we do have estimates on population of Other Backward Classes (OBC) and the proverbial upper castes or non-SC-ST-OBC population shares from government surveys such as the National Family and Health Survey (NFHS). A comparison of latest NFHS data shows that the combined share of SC-ST-OBC population in Tamil Nadu is 97.5%, the highest among all large states by a large distance. Tamil Nadu continues to lead here even if one were to compare share of just Hindu SC-ST-OBC population.

The Dravidian party duopoly in Tamil Nadu is significantly more powerful than other caste-based party duopolies outside the state

Politics in Tamil Nadu continues to be dominated by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). These two regional parties are products of the larger Dravidian politics stream in the state. The combined vote share of the DMK and the AIADMK in the state has never fallen below 54% since 1977, the first election that the AIADMK contested. It crossed 70% in the last two elections. The seat share dominance of the two regional parties is even bigger. It has never fallen below 67% and was 96% and 85% in the last two elections. The Dravidian dominance in Tamil Nadu’s politics is significantly stronger than what it has been for other regional party duopolies with social justice roots competitions in states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. When read with the data in the earlier section, it is likely rooted in the demographic dominance of non-upper castes in Tamil Nadu.

But duopoly does not mean a single party dominance in Tamil Nadu

The DMK led alliance has won three back-to-back elections in Tamil Nadu since the 2019 Lok Sabha. However, this is not the only such winning streak in Tamil Nadu. There are two more three-election streaks if one includes Lok Sabha elections. For example, AIADMK won 2011, 2014, and 2016 elections. The DMK won the state in 2004, 2006 and 2009 elections. If one excludes Lok Sabha elections, AIADMK is the only party to win three consecutive assembly elections from 1977 to 1984. Interestingly, the DMK or AIADMK do not really have a widespread geographical dominance in the state. Between 2011 and 2021, there were only 54 out of the 234 ACs in the state which were won by either the DMK or AIADMK in all three elections. This number is significantly smaller than the share of ACs won by arch-rivals Congress and Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Kerala each time between 2011 and 2021. Pre-2011 ACs cannot be compared with current ones because of change in AC boundaries in the 2008. Another way to look at the bipartisan Dravidian dominance in Tamil Nadu politics is that other parties in the state, such as Congress, BJP and even the communists have allied with both the DMK and the AIADMK in different elections.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Abhishek Jha
Abhishek Jha is Assistant Editor-Data at Hindustan Times. He uses statistical programming to generate newsworthy insights from large datasets. He is part of the team that produces Number Theory, a daily data story feature of the paper’s print edition. Since March 2024, he has been writing Weather Bee, a weekly column for the Hindustan Times website. He is a chemical engineer by training, who specialises in stories related to weather, climate, and the environment. Jha has been at HT since 2018, where he offers data-driven perspective and analysis on politics, environment, weather, climate, economy and society. His work includes data coverage of elections in India and abroad, including the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections; the disasters and extreme weather resulting from changing climate, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, cold waves, and dwindling snow cap in the Himalayas; the factors that drive poor air quality in northern India; the changing patterns of land use; the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on labour market conditions; the changing pattern of consumer spending seen in the new consumer spending surveys; and social norms seen in the surveys such as the National Family Health Survey.Read More
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Roshan Kishore
Roshan Kishore is the Data and Political Economy Editor at Hindustan Times. He heads the newsroom's data journalism team, which produces Number Theory, a daily data-driven feature for the print edition and the HT app. Number Theory uses data analysis and story-telling based on it to add value to the newsroom’s daily coverage by putting stories in a larger context on a range of issues, including politics, macroeconomy, markets, global affairs and climate. Under his leadership HT’s data journalism work has established itself as a niche product in Indian journalism and pushed the boundaries of marrying academic rigour with news sense and speed. Along with writing and editing data stories, he has also been writing a weekly political economy column called Terms of Trade for HT Premium. A trained economist with an MPhil degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Kishore has also been a visiting fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania. Along with his journalistic work, his writings have also appeared in journals such as the Economic and Political Weekly and working papers for CASI and UNESCAP.Read More
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nishant Ranjan
Nishant Ranjan has been working as a data journalist with Hindustan Times since 2023. In this short period, he has established a niche for creating original datasets and utilising them to produce journalistic work that pushes the boundaries of journalism. The list of datasets and stories done by him include the following: a dataset of all 717 chief ministers India has had since 1952, a dataset of all 3,350 members of India’s council of ministers, a dataset of all 190 deputy chief ministers in India and a dataset of all 279 Supreme Court judges in India (1950-2025). He has also profiled each elected Muslim MLA/MP since 1952. He is a mining engineer by training who decided to pursue a Master's in Development Studies from TISS after working in a coal mine for 10 months. He also worked as a research associate at the Centre for Policy Research, researching local governance in India. He also has a keen interest in analyzing electoral politics and political executives in India.Read More

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