Huge increase in AIADMK votes, as Cong's share dips

As against 22.88 per cent of the total votes polled, the AIADMK’s vote share in the 2011 Assembly elections is up to a whopping 39.08 per cent. It is 6.44 per cent more than its 2006 tally, which helped the party gain 89 seats and a comfortable majority to form a government on its own.

The AIADMK is also the only party which has consistently upped its vote share since the last 2006 Assembly polls. Preliminary data  indicates that the AIADMK has bettered its 2006 Assembly poll record of 32.64 per cent by 6.44 percentage points this time. 

A 6.44 percentage points upswing in this Assembly polls has more than doubled the number of seats won by the AIADMK, from 61 in 2006 to 146 of the 160 seats it contested in the 2011 polls. Members of three other parties who contested on the AIADMK’s ‘Two leaves’ symbol won four seats.  The actor-turned-politician  Vijayakant-founded DMDK, which has been part of the AIADMK-led alliance along with the CPI, CPM and a host of other smaller parties, has got 7.88 per cent of the vote share, winning 29 of the 41 seats it had been allotted. This represents a small drop of 2.23 percentage points for DMDK from its 2009 Lok Sabha poll level of 10.11 per cent when the party had gone it alone.

The vote share of the DMK in the 2011 polls, in which it won 23 out of  119 seats contested by it, has dropped from 25.09 per cent in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls to 22.38 per cent now. The DMK also found its support base eroded by over 3 percentage points when compared to its 2006 performance of 26.46 per cent.   This fall in support base is despite the fact that DMK was accused of distributing money to voters and had showered a host of freebies on the electorate in the last five years. The Congress  had to suffer a major setback, apparently for its alliance with the DMK, whose image took a beating after the 2G spectrum scam. The Congress’ vote share  dropped 5.73 percentage points in this election, from 15.03 per cent in the 2009 LS polls to 9.30 per cent now.

The Congress could win only five of the 63 seats. All ten youth Congress candidates, nominees of Rahul Gandhi, lost the race now.