Key seats, rural-urban trends & other highlights: All you need to know about Tamil Nadu polls
India Today
The Tamil Nadu Assembly polls will witness a direct fight between the ruling BJP and the AIADMK alliance, and the opposition coalition of the DMK and Congress.
This will be the first election in decades when two charismatic leaders of Tamil Nadu politics J Jayalalithaa and M Karunanidhi will be missing in action. And this will also be the first election after the state bucked the long tradition of voting out the incumbent in 2016. AIADMK founder MG Ramachandran got a second term in 1984 and his political heir Jayalalithaa had the distinction of doing an encore after 32 years. Thanks to a better performance in semi-urban and rural seats, Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK won 134 of the 234 seats in the 2016 assembly elections. Despite a vote share in excess of 40 per cent, the DMK-led alliance had to be satisfied with 98 seats. Of the 75 semi-urban seats, the AIADMK had managed to win 51 with a vote share of 42.2 per cent. The DMK-led alliance won 23 such seats with a vote share of 39.6 per cent. Yet another booster for the AIADMK last time was the kind of support it got from women voters. Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) post-poll data shows the AIADMK had a lead of 10 percentage points among women voters, which proved to be a game-changer.More Related News