DMK front fails to benefit from anti-incumbency trend against AIADMK rule

Chennai: The DMK-led front has secured a vote-share of 43.65 per cent in the votes counted so far, about 2.18 per cent more than that of the AIADMK-led combine's vote share of 41.47 per cent. The AIADMK current vote-share clearly indicates an anti-incumbency trend against chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami's AIADMK rule compared to the 2016 Assembly polls. The DMK-led combine has a mere 2.18 per cent edge over the rival front at the moment, with 50 per cent of the votes still to be counted, which explains why the DMK has not been able to register an emphatic victory despite the anti-incumbency trend.

The swing against the AIADMK appears to be nearly 10 per cent, given that the party secured 41.1 per cent in 2016 on its own. It now has new allies in the BJP, ruling party at the Centre, and PMK, Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC), and a few other minor parties, whose combined vote-share would be around 10 per cent, keeping in mind voting figures in 2016 Assembly and 2019 Lok Sabha polls.  

Thus, the AIADMK vote-share should have been 51 to 52 per cent, as against which it could muster only a total of 41.47 per cent, despite pumping in several hundrd crore rupees in government advertisements to boost the image of Palaniswami, and cash doles at the time of Pongal, besides several freebies at the cost of the Government treasury.

On the other hand, the DMK has not succeeded in reaping benefits from this anti-incumbency trend. Judging by the DMK vote-share of 2016 of 39.9 per cent including that of the DMK and Congress mainly, the combined vote-share in 2021 is only 43.65 per cent, which is not a big increase since the votes of CPI, CPM, MDMK and VCK (who contested as part of a six-party third front in 2016) if added to 39.9 means that the DMK has hardly gained from the 2016 position. Even the votes of the four allies could have been higher than the 3 per cent secured by them in 2016 since they were now contesting as part of a powerful DMK-led front, some of them even contesting on the DMK symbol. Given this situation, the nearly 10 per cent swing against the AIADMK now has clearly not come to the DMK-led combine.

This percentage has apparently gone to the AMMK led by TTV Dinakaran, nephew of Sasikala Natarajan, who was a close aide of former chief minister and AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa, Kamal Haasan's Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) and partly to the Naam Tamizhar Katchi (NTK) led by actor-director Seeman. The DMK has clearly failed to take advantage of the steep drop in AIADMK vote share and allowed a fragmentation of the anti-AIADMK vote.