The numbers behind Tamil Nadu’s political earthquake

The political debutant Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) formed by the film star Vijay has finished first in the state with 107seats

Published on: May 5, 2026, 08:48:32 IST

By Roshan Kishore, Sreedev Krishnakumar, Abhishek Jha, New Delhi

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The most shocking election result in this cycle has come from Tamil Nadu, the largest state in south India and the fifth largest in terms of number of Lok Sabha MPs among states. The political debutant Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) formed by the film star Vijay has finished first in the state with 107seatsleaving behind the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) led alliances. To be sure, the TVK has still fallen short of the halfway mark in the assembly of 234 and government formation will take some post-poll understanding. How does one explain this result? Here are four key data points which matter.

Both the DMK and the AIADMK have recorded among their worst ever contested vote shares in Tamil Nadu. (DMK website)

Tamil Nadu politics has gone back to being triangular after 50 years

Not only does this show in the fact that a party or alliance has failed to get a majority of its own in the state, it also shows in the more esoteric statistical measure of degree of political fragmentation. The median effective number of parties (ENOP) in Tamil Nadu in the 2026 elections is 3.23. This number has crossed three for the first time in the state after the 1977 elections. ENOP is the reciprocal of sum of squares of vote share of each candidate in a constancy. This means that if three candidates polled exactly equal vote shares ENOP will be 3. If the three parties had a vote share of 70%, 20% and 10%, ENOP will be 1.85. Unless one of the three parties sink, Tamil Nadu politics is entering historically uncharted territory after this election.

Both the DMK and AIADMK face a moment of reckoning now

The TVK is the second debutant political force after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to have made an impressive debut in a state election in India is the recent past. What makes the TVK’s stellar debut in these elections even more special is the fact that it has inflicted huge pain on both the incumbent as well as the main opposition party in Tamil Nadu. AAP’s entry into politics was different because it primarily hurt the Congress rather than the BJP in Delhi, where it first made political impact. Both the DMK and the AIADMK have recorded among their worst ever contested vote shares in Tamil Nadu. This makes the TVK’s success a damning indictment of the entire political establishment in Tamil Nadu. Of the 159 constituencies won by the DMK+ in 2021, only 54 stayed with the alliance in 2026. TVK+ captured 77 of them, while ADMK+ took 28. The AIADMK’s 2021 map was also breached. Of the 75 seats won by AIADMK+ last time, TVK+ won 30, ADMK+ retained 25 and DMK+ won 20.

This can also be seen in the breaching of party-wise strongholds in the state. There were 57 assembly constituencies that were won by the same party in all three elections between 2011 and 2021. Of these, AIADMK held 38, DMK 16 and Congress three. In 2026, AIADMK retained only 14 of its 38 strongholds, while DMK retained 10 of its 16. TVK won 16 AIADMK strongholds and three DMK strongholds, showing that the party’s breakthrough was not confined to swing seats.

The symbolic centre of this shift was Kolathur, where chief minister M K Stalin lost to TVK’s V S Babu. Kolathur had been Stalin’s seat since 2011 and was widely seen as a DMK bastion. The AIADMK’s damage was different. Edappadi K Palaniswami retained Edappadi, but TVK broke through in the western region, the AIADMK’s most important zone.

The DMK alliance is better off than AIADMK because of its allies

DMK and AIADMK alliances will have 74 and 53 MLAs in the new assembly. The difference between DMK and AIADMK’s own tallies is much lower: 58 and 46 respectively. The reason, the DMK alliance has a much larger tally than AIADMK is a better performance by its allies. This shows clearly in the strike rate of DMK and AIADMK and their allies in the state. The worst strike rate among allies of the DMK and the AIADMK is that of the BJP, just 3%. The BJP contested the highest number of ACs among the AIADMK’s allies. It will not be wrong to say that the poor performance of the BJP carries a larger message for the AIADMK and other parties in the state.

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
Sreedev Krishnakumar
Sreedev Krishnakumar is a data journalist who specialises in stories at the intersection of the economy, geopolitics, politics and finance. His work combines data analysis, reporting and visual storytelling to explain complex issues through evidence-based journalism, with a focus on making public data accessible and meaningful for readers. He joined the Data and Political Economy team at Hindustan Times in 2024 after working as a correspondent/data journalist at Moneycontrol, where he covered macroeconomics, markets, public finance and business. Over the course of his career, he has developed expertise in analysing large datasets, building interactive visualisations and using computational methods to uncover trends and patterns that inform public debate. Sreedev holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Integrated Multimedia Journalism from the Asian College of Journalism. His reporting interests include finance, economics, geopolitics, trade, technology and development.Read More
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

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