Kerala Politics

Simplifying and Decoding The Most Exciting - Kerala Assembly Election 2021

About the Kerala State Election results in 2021. How the three fronts — UDF, LDF, and NDA, fought against one another to capture power amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

The result for the Kerala Elections 2021 was declared on 2nd May. As predicted by all the pollsters, the ruling alliance LDF triumphed back to power with a bigger mandate. According to the pre-poll and post-poll surveys, we can witness that the verdict was predictable and the only doubt was about the seat share and margin of victory. Why did we see a comeback of the previous government? Was there an actual wave? Why did the four-decade-long jinx break? Who all won in the wave? Who all lost? Let us discuss all these questions in detail.

Before we proceed do read the precursor articles for better understanding:

An Introduction to Polling Arithmetic

Even though we say that elections are a battle of ideas, it is mere arithmetic. Without basic calculations, it's impossible for parties, alliances or pollsters to plan and win the elections. Let us cover some basic arithmetic before we proceed.

You don’t need to get all the votes to win the majority for Indian elections. Even half the votes are also not needed. For a perfectly bi-polar election, you need more than 50% to win the election, while in a perfectly tri-polar election, you need a mere 33% and above to secure victory. Since the majority of Indian elections are neither perfectly bipolar or tripolar, the winning party will need a mere vote share margin of 37%+. In 2019, BJP swung back to power only with 37.5% of the votes.

In a tightly fought election, the ruling party merely needs 2–3% than its closest competitor. When the difference between both crosses 5%, then it's a landslide election with the ruling party receiving a thumping majority. The opposition is weak and the government becomes strong. When the gap is really big (>10%), then the election is a clean sweep. The government is invincible and opposition is negligible. In 2020, AAP swept Delhi with a 15% margin against BJP.

Despite having a large vote share, contesting parties need not even win a single seat. While parties with even a tiny seat share can win a decent number of constituencies. Also, forming alliances may or may not be arithmetically working, but it may fail in real life.

Political Geography of Kerala

Kerala is both politically, historically and geographically divided into three regions — Northern, Central and Southern. It is also known as Malabar, Cochin and Travancore respectively.

Defining the same in terms of the districts-

Malabar — Kasargod, Kannur, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Malappuram

Cochin — Palakkad, Thrissur, Ernakulam, Alapuzha, Kottayam, Idukki

Travancore — Pathanamthitta, Kollam, Trivandrum

In the North, the votes of the Muslim community is significant. In the Centre, it’s the Christian votes that matter, and in the South, it’s the votes of Hindus that is important. The winning party requires votes from all the sections to win. The North and South have always been the citadel of the LDF. It is the Central area that overwhelmingly votes for the UDF.

Malappuram is also the only district that is a Muslim majority district in the state. That is where the Indian Union Muslim League is based and wins a majority of its seats. Ernakulam is the district where Congress outshines all its rivals. Kottayam is the bastion of the Kerala Congress which is now split into two. Both these district powers along with Malappuram powers the UDF engine.

The rest of the districts except for Idukki are big forts of the CPI-M and its allies.

UDF’s win or loss is solely based on the performance of the Congress party. Its performance each time decides the winner or the loser of the election. Other allies keep their performance.

Elections 2021 in A Capsule

A brief recap of this election, pre-poll factors, elections issues, candidates, headlines that changed the political landscape.

An Election podcast

Seats Share

As expected, the victory was resounding with the LDF securing 99 seats, just one short of a century. The UDF came a distant second with 41 seats. The total strength in the assembly is 140 seats. Last time in 2016, the tally was 91 for LDF, 47 for UDF, and a single one for NDA. In 2011, it was a tight election with the UDF having a thin edge.

Vote Share

Following is the vote share of the important alliances contesting in the election:

LDF - 45.28 %

UDF - 39.41%

NDA - 12.40%

NOTA - 0.47 %

Others - 2.91%

We can see that the vote share difference is quite small for an election to be a clean sweep, despite a big gap between the share of seats. It is mainly because there are different parties in the alliance and each ally has performed differently than the other. Despite all the seats not exactly giving a tri-polar contest, the contest moreover became tightly bipolar. We can see that the UDF was indeed giving tough competition and in most of the constituencies, the margin was just tiny. The five per cent gap between the top two fronts is indicative of a landslide election.

Situation in 2021

As mentioned above, the LDF was able to sweep the entire state. North, South, and the Center went into the hands of LDF. Except for two big clusters and a few isolated blue areas, all of them went red.

The two big clusters were nothing but 12 seats of Malappuram and 15 seats of Ernakulam and Kottayam combined. Together, both of them contribute to 27 seats of the 41 seats won. In the south, the UDF could hardly manage to win 4 seats. They could manage to get only 3 out of 14 districts.

In the Kozhikode district, Congress couldn’t even win a single seat. The UDF seats were won by allies.

Pathanamthitta, once a UDF stronghold, has now been wiped out.

Urban Trivandrum, which was held by the UDF, lost all that and could manage to win only a single seat. The same is the case with Thrissur. Alappuzha and Idukki weren’t so different either. The sole seats won there are only isolated strongholds.

What all factors helped the LDF

As usual, it was the LDF that was way ahead in preparation, coordinated working, and campaigning. Following were the factors which in a big way helped the LDF triumph.

• A well-disciplined cadre
• A coordinated effort from the very beginning
• Party and alliance was united behind one man - Shri Pinarayi Vijayan
• Party is led from Kerala itself, there is no high command culture
• Well structured campaign strategy
• The slogan of Urappanu LDF - showed confidence and successfully resonated in people’s mind
• The strongman personality cult of Mr CM as captain
• Big support in rural areas
• High-level crisis management led by the government
• Efficient delivery and welfare
• A big cut into UDF votes and several UDF strongholds
• Coming of KCM into LDF

All of these in a big way helped the CPI-M led LDF government come back to power with a bigger majority.

What all factors hampered the LDF

Despite the LDF being invincible, the path wasn’t as easy as it seemed. The opposition parties ensured that the battle wasn’t smooth. Here is why the LDF did not see a smooth victory -

• Strong opposition from the UDF in the campaign days
• Allegations and counters against the LDF rule
• Voice against power concentration and strongman personality of the CM
• UDF’s core voter base was intact

What all factors saved the UDF

Despite the LDF tsunami, the UDF could save its face and hold on to its strongholds too. These are the few reasons that managed to help the UDF even in its darkest time -

• UDF strongholds in Malappuram and Ernakulam saved from a massive downfall
• Allegations were strong against LDF and UDF tried hard to put it up
• UDF was successful to portray well against CM’s one-man rule
• UDF managed to hold on to the core voter base in several seats
• A lot of individual UDF leaders were able to win based on their personality and hard work in respective constituencies

What led to the disaster of UDF

• Poor performance of Congress party, making it the weakest link in the alliance
• The high command culture of the UDF is crippling the alliance
• The groupism and factionalism within the party
• Lack of coordinated effort in the beginning
• Had nothing else to offer compared to crisis management and welfare
• Had trouble reaching on to the people
• Exit of KCM from UDF

Why NDA couldn’t perform well

The NDA was led by BJP and didn’t depend much on the allies. BJP was ahead in everything before the elections. It had planned to make a dent across the state hoping for the best. The main positive news for the BJP came from December 2020 where it made gains in the LSG elections. Despite all these, BJP wasn’t able to give its own best. Even LDF and UDF would be shocked to see the result.

BJP penned hopes on two seats - Manjeshwaram in the extreme North and Nemom in the extreme south. It had also called Nemom, Gujarat, showing how strong it was. BJP also hoped on two more seats - Palakkad and Thrissur. There were several seats that BJP considered as A-class and it could perform much better than expected.

In Manjeshwaram, poll arithmetic depends upon Majority and Minority consolidation. It's a seat that sees a direct contest between IUML and BJP. Consolidation itself is what both parties require to win. Each time, the victory is determined on which consolidation is more than the other. As usual, UDF came to victory with a tiny margin.

In Nemom, it's LDF consolidation vs the others’ consolidation. The Left will always get their votes right, while in Nemom, it was BJP and UDF which had the benefit of non-LDF votes. In 2016, it was a clear shift from UDF to BJP that helped BJP win the seat. In 2021, a strong UDF candidate brought back the cadre votes of the party leading to BJP’s collapse.

Palakkad was not the seat BJP hoped to win anytime time soon despite it coming second. Palakkad Municipality is now a BJP fortress. From this, the BJP wanted to convert that victory to an assembly victory. BJP needed a face and it was able to have it, although BJP overestimated its ability outside the municipal areas. Rural areas were never a BJP strong area.

Overall, BJP failing to open an account itself is an embarrassment. Bringing Central ministers or CMs from other states was a failed strategy and that was never how Kerala’s politics worked. Unless BJP tries to act like a Kerala party it won’t be able to gain much, it can’t keep portraying its Northernness. Sabarimala crackers were busted during Lok Sabha and now it's no more a winning tool.

Interesting Contests and Flips

The main essence of elections is the seats contested, the candidate list and the list of winners and losers. This election too stood out in this aspect.

1. Pala Mani C Kappan who had left the LDF is up against Jose K Mani who has arrived at LDF from UDF. We can see that they have switched their sides from last time. Pala has been the centre of KCM’s politics and in 2019 Kappan had breached it with a narrow victory. In 2021, there was no shock because Kappan held on to the seat with 12,000 votes.

2. Thripunithra The fortress of UDF for three decades under K Babu had fallen in 2016 when M Swaraj won it. Now, K Babu once again has wrestled back the seat from M Swaraj. This is an important LDF to UDF flip in Ernakulam.

3. Nemom The sole seat that BJP had won in 2016 under O Rajagopal. In a three-cornered fight between V Shivankutty, former mayor of TVM and ex MLA of LDF, K Muraleedharn of UDF and Kummanam Rajashekharan of the BJP took place and a surprise happened, K Rajashekharan lost the seat as well as the votes he had. A lot of UDF cadre votes was regained by K Muraleedharan forcing the victory of V Shivankutty.

4. Kunnathunadu This is a seat where the apolitical entity Twenty Twenty is seeing itself to break the goals of mainstream political parties.

5. Manjeshwaram The northernmost constituency of Kerala bordering Karnataka has a large population of linguistic minorities. The seat has always seen a consolidation of Hindu votes in favour of BJP and Muslim votes in favour of A M Ashraf. This time UDF’s A M Ashraf had a sure victory.

6. Thrithala Witnessed a tight fight between two youth veterans V T Balram of UDF and M B Rajesh of LDF, only to see Rajesh successfully flipping the seat.

7. Thrissur city Balachandran Menon of LDF won the triangularly fought seat with a margin of 1000 votes against Padmaja Venugopal of UDF and Suresh Gopi of BJP.

8. Kundara The main challenger was P Vishnunath who has a good track record of winning elections in Chenganur, toppled J Mercy Kutty Amma, who was also the Fisheries Minister. The main issue in the constituency is EMCC deep fishing issue. This was one of the most important flips and she was the only minister who lost the election.

9. Palakkad E Sreedharan of BJP was way ahead at first, especially in the urban centres as the counting started. As the counting proceeded, sitting MLA Shafi Parambil of UDF bounced back to victory claiming back the margin votes. Some people have tried to show that this is an exemplary achievement, although, it was counting of votes that made the magic and Shafi was anyway poised to win the election. Sreedharan could have been given a seat with a better chance of winning.

10. Thavanoor IUML turned LDF Independent K T Jaleel fought till the end and defeated philanthropist Firoz Kunnamparambil, who was on an INC ticket but has been a League loyalist.

11. Kazhakootam A prominent suburb of Trivandrum city, also the IT centre of Kerala is now having a 3-sided battle. LDF has fielded sitting MLA and Devoswom Minister Kadamkambally Surendran triumphed over both Dr S S Lal of UDF and BJP’s Sobha Surendran.

12. Kunnathunad The playground of Twenty 20’s politics, was getting national-level attention for a four-cornered race. LDF’s V Shreejin successfully wrested a long time UDF bastion. The most probable reason for the flip itself will be how Twenty 20 played a spoiler against the UDF. A similar verdict happened in the Kochi constituency when Twenty 20 came in third place with 20,000 votes eating away a major chunk of UDF votes.

13. Kalamassery The home constituency of controversial ex-Minister Ibrahim Kunju. His son was in the fray this time. Taking everyone for a rampant chill, P Rajeev toppled the league-UDF stronghold in a record margin.

14. Mattanur KK Shailaja, popular health minister of the state secured the seat with a massive margin of 60,000 votes which is the highest margin for any candidate in the state.

15. Dharmadom CM Pinarayi Vijayan’s constituency has been in the headlines for a lot of reasons. He kept the seat with over 50,000 votes.

Lessons to be learnt

With coordinated effort and contact delivery, elections can be won easily. More united the parties become and work for their goal, they can taste victory. Understanding people during the crisis time is essentially what the ruling party tried to display and they won the elections. The Opposition, despite having good Ammos, focused on failed pseudo issues. All elections cannot be won on Sabarimala and emotive issues.

Read about the consequences of this election at the national level:

Conclusion

A tight season that was closely fought, constrained by the pandemic and historic in multiple senses is finally over. The verdict has been decisive and is clearly written in golden letters. The big task is just yet to start, i.e. keeping the trust and hopes of the people and paying them back.

As a voter, your duty isn’t over yet. Whenever possible you need to follow up on various issues, their work, progress, etc. These are some basic things which you can do aside from whatever you are doing now. Also try to focus on local constituency-based issues, history of constituents, track-record of MLAs, amount of funds allocated, etc.

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