Tamil Nadu Assembly Elections 2026 | How TVK's Vijay ended six decades of Dravidian duopoly

Chennai: Chandrasekaran Joseph Vijay on Monday broke the Dravidian duopoly of the DMK and  the AIADMK in style by leading his two-year-old Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) to an emphatic victory in the April 23 polls to elect Tamil Nadu’s 17th Assembly. 

By winning or leading in 107 of the 234 seats — just 11 short of the magic number of 118 — Vijay’s stupendous performance mirrors the historic 1967 elections when the then-fledgling DMK overthrew the Congress government, riding high on the anti-Hindi agitation.

Contesting alone, Vijay secured an impressive 35% of the polled votes, surpassing the record created by the legendary M G Ramachandran, who scored about 33.5% in his first election with two allies in 1977 after launching the AIADMK in a four-cornered fight.

The C N Annadurai-led DMK secured 40.69% of the popular vote in the 1967 elections, fighting with five alliance partners. The DMK won 144 seats in 1967, while the AIADMK won 137 in 1977.

On this scale, Vijay’s rise to the chief minister’s chair from the tinsel town is unprecedented.

His ascent only parallels that of Telugu matinee idol N T Rama Rao, who stormed to power in Andhra Pradesh within eight months of launching the Telugu Desam Party (TDP).

NTR rode a wave of Atma Gauravam (self-respect), but Vijay led a silent wave by allowing Gen Z, women and young people to campaign for him in the run-up to the polls. Vijay’s spectacular victory is also a classic case of challenging traditional ways of campaigning.

If it was students who rallied behind the DMK in 1967, it was Gen Z and women across all ages who stood behind Vijay in scripting history; he has effectively ended the uninterrupted 60-year run of the DMK and its offshoot, the AIADMK. 

This victory signifies the yearning for change among the people of Tamil Nadu, who had grown fatigued with the DMK and the AIADMK after they ruled the state alternately since 1967.

Though the TVK could not reach the magic number on its own — DMK allies who won about 14 seats are likely to help him — a 'Vijay tsunami' swept through the state. The waves were so intense that incumbent Chief Minister M K Stalin lost to his former DMK colleague, V S Babu, in Kolathur, and more than 30 of his Cabinet colleagues lost to TVK nominees, most of them political novices.

A few exceptions include Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin, who scraped through in Chepauk-Thiruvallikeni. While the DMK was on course to occupy the Opposition benches by winning or leading in 60 seats, the AIADMK won or led in 47 seats.

Whether Udhayanidhi will be the Leader of the Opposition, making the equations in the Assembly interesting, remains to be seen; the DMK scion and Vijay were friends once but turned rivals in the past few years.

From an auto driver-turned-entrepreneur to a salon worker, commoners assumed power by defeating entrenched politicians in this election, a phenomenon last witnessed in 1967 when Annadurai sent the Congress packing.

The sound of 'Whistle' — TVK’s election symbol — echoed across the length and breadth of Tamil Nadu, with party candidates winning from Chennai and the northern districts to Coimbatore, Dindigul, Madurai, Thoothukudi and southernmost Kanyakumari.

Like the DMK’s Rising Sun and Annadurai in 1967, it was only Vijay and the Whistle in this election; nothing else, including candidates, mattered. 

Vijay demolished the vote bank of every political party, especially the DMK and the AIADMK, to sweep the state. His party performed spectacularly well in the Greater Chennai region, and Vijay's decision to contest from Perambur seems to have had significant ripple effects.

Even MGR couldn’t break the DMK’s stranglehold over Chennai in his debut elections as AIADMK chief, and it took about two decades of active politics for J Jayalalithaa to make inroads into the DMK’s citadel. Her party first won seven of the 14 seats in 2006 and 14 of the 16 seats in the 2011 elections.