Back in the day, political fortune tellers used to steer clear of Kerala elections, given the unpredictability of the outcome. Close fights and wafer-thin margins were the norm in the State, and swings and shifts mattered much more than in perhaps any other State. But old habits no longer seem to hold good now, going by the outcome of the elections held in the State over the past decade and more.
Electoral winds in Kerala no longer blow in confusing directions and its collective electoral preferences have been showing a pattern of moving entirely to one side or the other.
In the 2001 Assembly election, the wind blew in favour of the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) and the alliance won 99 seats in the 140-member Assembly with 49.05 per cent of the polled votes. In 2004, the wind blew back, buffeting the UDF and helping the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) make a handsome haul of 18 of the 20 seats with a 46.15 per cent vote share. In 2006, the trend continued and the LDF once again reaped handsome gains, winning 99 Assembly seats with a vote share of 48.63 per cent.
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In 2009, angry winds pulled out the LDF roots and the UDF won 16 Lok Sabha seats with a vote share of 47.74 per cent. In the 2010 local body election, the UDF created history bagging 65 per cent of the local bodies. The only exception to this pattern came in the 2011 Assembly election, when Kerala seemed to return to its familiar pattern of divided voting, but that was a complex tale of fratricidal intrigue in the LDF.
The huge margins that separate the winners in terms of seats won and vote share cannot happen without voters casting their ballots beyond their known political affiliations or joining the ballooning ranks of non-committed voters. In the bargain, the UDF and the LDF have made massive gains or losses.
With anxieties in the high ranges that straddle three or four constituencies over the implementation of the K. Kasturirangan committee report on Western Ghats conservation and the corruption scandals that have dogged the ruling dispensation, particularly Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, coupled with big national questions, the LDF has everything that should help it to put its archrival on the mat. But, there are also many an embarrassment that it must live down — the still fresh memories of Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP) leader T.P. Chandrasekharan’s murder and the rap on the knuckles that the RSP has dealt it on poll-eve.
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The task is cut out for the LDF: revive the fast-fading public memory about the “solar scam,” the massive plunder of the State’s scarce land resources by the real estate mafia and expose the unseen hands that are pushing forward the greenfield Aranmula airport project. For the UDF, riding on some providential escapes these past few weeks, things appear to have settled down just in time.
The many agitations mounted by the CPI(M) and the LDF over a host of issues, mostly corruption-related, have failed to catch favourable wind. Unlike in the past, the alliance is far more cohesive this time and the man who heads the charge this time, V.M. Sudheeran as Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president, has tremendous public credibility. The worries over the Kasturirangan committee report have subsided and the UDF’s traditional support base among the communities appears more or less intact.