Led by Rahul, UDF sweeps Left out

The Congress-led United Democratic Front has won 19 out of the 20 Lok Sabha seats in Kerala, including Wayanad, from where Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who won with a thumping majority of over four lakh votes.

The BJP-led NDA could not win even one seat in Kerala despite their high hopes of becoming the beneficiaries of the Sabarimala women's entry issue.

The ruling CPM-led Left Democratic Front suffered a major setback winning only one seat; they had won eight in 2014.

Rahul Gandhi's surprise candidature at Wayanad, the north Kerala district that shares borders with Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, also seemed to have helped the UDF.

While Rahul Gandhi secured 6.7 lakh votes, CPI's P P Seneeer was pushed to the second place with 2.7 lakh votes. NDA candidate Tushar Vellapally of the BDJS party was nowhere in the picture with only around 75,000 votes.

The BJP had high hopes for Thiruvananthapuram owing to the higher Hindu population in the constituency.

MUST READ | Lok Sabha Election Results 2019 LIVE Updates

The saffron party even brought back its former state president Kummanam Rajasekharan, who was serving as the Mizoram governor, to contest against two-time MP Shashi Tharoor of the Congress.

However, Tharoor has been able to increase his victory margin to 85,000 from just 15,000 last time. Kummanam came second.

BJP's firebrand leader K Surendran, who led the Sabarimala stir, was pushed to third-place at Pathanamthitta, where the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple is located. Congress candidate Anto Antony got a hat-trick victory there.

The BJP hoped that there would be Hindu vote consolidation in their favour. However, the election results show that the BJP could not tap the middle and lower castes among Hindu voters, which included the prominent Ezhava community, owing to the general impression that the BJP represented the upper castes.

The Ezhava community has been considered a vote bank of the Left Front over the years.

But this time, a large section of the community seemed to have voted against the Left Front protesting the stand of the Left front government in favour of the entry of women in the 10-50 age group to Sabarimala.

These votes seemed to have gone in favour of UDF.

Another impact of the Sabarimala issue was a counter-consolidation of Christian and Muslim communities in favour of the Congress-led UDF.

A series of the anti-incumbency factors against the Left Front government in Kerala, as well as the adamant nature of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan seen on various occasions, including during the Sabarimala crisis, also seemed to have favoured the Congress-led UDF.

Alappuzha is the lone seat won by the Left Front, with CPM's sitting MLA A M Arif defeated Congress' Shanimol Usman.

The CPI could not win even any seats in Kerala this time, even as its only MP in the outgoing Lok Sabha was from Kerala.

In 2014, the UDF had won 12 seats, which has increased to 19 this time. For the Left Front, it was eight seats in 2014, which got reduced to one now.