CHENNAI: While Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) president C Joseph Vijay began his journey to the chief minister's office at Fort St George on Monday, Tamil Nadu entered an uncharted political territory of a fractured mandate and the possibility of a coalition government.
Election Results 2026
Vijay's TVK has emerged as the single largest party with 107 seats while the DMK front secured 74 and the AIADMK front 52 seats. All three fall short of the majority mark of 118 seats. For chief minister M K Stalin, the verdict has halted his bid for a second consecutive term, a feat his father M Karunanidhi never achieved. Voters have denied a clear mandate not just to Stalin, but to AIADMK too.
Though AIADMK seems to have recovered from its 2024 Lok Sabha poll disaster, it is still nowhere near power. The numbers show that most of the gains TVK made were at the cost of DMK. Yet, the surge has not translated into a clear majority for Vijay's party that was not yet founded when the previous government was elected.
Tamil Nadu last saw a hung assembly in 2006, when DMK won only 92 seats and Karunanidhi formed a minority government with outside support. This time, with no party positioned to replicate that model easily, the state will witness post-poll negotiations and realignments – another first. DMK has declared that it would play the role of the opposition party, ruling out any attempts to mop up support from other parties to form government. Chances of AIADMK striking a deal with TVK for a coalition government too remains remote as AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami would be averse to the idea of playing second fiddle to Vijay.
Which means that TVK might have to form the government with support of either the allies of DMK or allies of AIADMK. Congress has five MLAs while other allies CPI, CPM and DMDK have two each, and IUML one. In the AIADMK front, PMK has won five seats. TVK might reach out to these parties to support promising cabinet berths. In any case, this election could perhaps be the first time that Tamil Nadu will have a coalition government.
The election has marked a few more firsts for the state. The most striking among them would be the vote share of TVK – 34.9 percent, higher than any other party's debut score. In 1957, when DMK debuted, the party got 14 percent and bettered their performance in the next election with 27 percent vote share. The party contested 143 seats and won 50. Making its electoral entry in 1977, MGR's AIADMK contested 200 seats and won 130 with a vote share of 30 percent. All other parties – DMDK, PMK, NTK and MNM got single digit vote shares in their maiden election.
This would also be the first time after 1996 when AIADMK will not be either the ruling or the principal opposition party in the state assembly. In 1996, AIADMK had won only four seats leaving DMK ally Tamil Maanila Congress with 39 seats to become the opposition party in the assembly. DMK faced a similar plight in 2011, when it won fewer seats (23) than AIADMK ally DMDK (29) which occupied the principal opposition seat. The 2026 verdict has altered the political dynamics of the state by shattering the Dravidian duopoly, another first in 50 years.
