Kerala Assembly Elections | How the Left Front bucked a decades-old trend in Kerala

Welfare measures, the Pinarayi factor and good governance helped the LDF overcome allegations of corruption

For almost four decades, power in Kerala has alternated between the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF). If this practice had continued, the UDF should have been voted to power in the just-concluded elections. But the voters gave a clear mandate for a second term to the LDF. For the LDF this was a key success in the wider context of national politics in general and the future of the Left parties in particular. For the UDF, this election has given it a second term in the Opposition and has proven to be a setback for the Congress, which was hoping to find a pathway for national recovery. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led was hoping to emerge as an important third force, but it was left without a representative in the newly elected Assembly. The LDF won a decisive mandate, clinching 99 seats and surpassing its tally in the previous House. It also saw an increase in its vote share compared to five years ago. The UDF won only 41 seats (a decline of six seats) but managed to retain more or less the same vote share that it had secured in the last Assembly elections (Table 1). The BJP-led alliance lost the one seat it had and only saw a marginal increase in its vote share. While the BJP’s vote share rose marginally, the vote share of its alliance partner, the Bharath Dharma Jana Sena, fell by 2.8%.