With a clear mandate, the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) won the 2026 assembly elections in Kerala with a vote share, the highest in a coalition since the 2001 elections. After a decade in opposition, the UDF was rewarded with a 46.55% vote share, bettered only by its 2001 performance of 49.05%. It is a gain of 7.67 percentage points over the vote share in 2021. The jump translated into a gain of 62 seats, taking the UDF to 102 seats in 2026, nearly three-fourths of the 140 assembly seats.
Conversely, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) saw a decline of 7.1 percentage points from its performance in 2021, garnering 37.34% of the vote and dropping 64 seats from 99 in 2021 to just 35 seats in 2026. This is the LDF’s worst assembly performance in over four decades in every parliamentary election since In 1982, the coalition won at least 43.5% of the vote.
Its previous lows were 43.48% in 2016 and 43.7% in 2001. The 2026 figure of 37.34% is more than six percentage points below the previous low and more than 11 points below LDF’s 2006 high of 48.63%. In a state whose politics has alternated on two fronts since 1982 with a single exception – the parliamentary elections in 2021 – the scale of the LDF’s collapse is unprecedented.
In 2021, the Pinarayi Vijayan-led coalition broke the cycle of removing incumbents and secured a rare second consecutive term, a phenomenon previously confined to the 1970s. The by-elections and local polls that preceded these parliamentary elections indicated a change in the benches, but the LDF’s 2026 turnarounds went far beyond what these signals indicated.
The LDF includes the Communist parties, Kerala Congress (Mani) or KC(M) and others, while the alliance also supports several independent candidates across the state. Both the CPI(M) and the CPI recorded similar vote shares, nearly 39%, in the seats they contested, but the KC(M), smaller LDF allies and the LDF-backed Independents underperformed in terms of the overall vote share of the front. The CPI(M), which contested 77 seats, was reduced to 26, a loss of 36 seats from 2021, while the CPI dropped from 17 to eight of the 24 it contested.
The UDF includes the Congress, Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), Kerala Congress (KC) and others. Congress contested 92 seats and won 63, an improvement of 42 seats from 2021, with a gain of 7.14 points in contested vote share to 45.03%. The IUML, which contested 26 seats, polled 52.54% of the votes in these constituencies – the highest vote share per contested seat for any party across alliances – winning 22 of them, up from 15 in 2021. The IUML had surpassed the Congress in vote share in its contested seats in previous assembly polls; this again helped the UDF as a whole to win a significant number of seats. The Kerala Congress, which contested eight seats, won seven.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which polled a vacant seat in 2021, increased its tally to an all-time high across the state, albeit on a marginal three seats. The NDA’s vote share rose by 1.79 percentage points to 14.2%, while the BJP itself won 16.04% of the seats it contested, sharing seats with its allies, the BDJS and the Twenty20 party.
Regional breakdown
The Malabar region, which has a higher proportion of Muslims and Christians than the rest of the state, gave the UDF its sharpest lead: the LDF lost or fell short of the 20 seats it previously held in the region, while the UDF secured 50.29% of the vote there with more than half of all votes cast in Malabar. The UDF’s performance was strong in all three regions with a vote share of 45.27% in Cochin, 43.21% in Travancore and 50.29% in Malabar.
Conversely, the LDF’s vote share in all the three regions steadily declined, settling in a narrow band of 36.6–38% and helping it retain a maximum of just 16 seats in the Cochin region with a vote share of 37.96%. The Travancore region, where the LDF had 40 seats in 2021, is now returning just 11, a collapse of 29 seats in the southern region, which has historically seen the most swings.
The NDA won all three of its seats in Travancore, where its vote share rose by 3 percentage points to 17.78%, the alliance’s biggest regional swing. The BJP’s vote share in contested seats has increased in all regions and has continued its steady rise in assembly vote share since 2001. Its 16.03% in contested seats this time around is roughly three times the 2001 figure, and a high number despite the party contesting fewer seats than in 2021.
How did the alliances do?
While incumbent Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan eventually managed to win, albeit by a much smaller margin compared to 2021, 13 of his cabinet colleagues were voted out. Most of the LDF ministers contested the elections from their seats. The Chief Minister initially trailed in the Dharmadam constituency but eventually won over Vice President Abdul Rasheed of the Congress.
The UDF’s decisive victory ended the LDF’s 10-year rule in Kerala. The Congress and its key ally, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), put up their best performance in a decade. Leader of Opposition VD Satheesan claimed that the Congress won the highest number of seats in recent years.
The BJP won from three assembly constituencies – Nemom, Kazhakoottam and Chathannoor. Kerala BJP president Rajeev Chandrasekhar said these victories were in response to the Congress and CPI(M)’s declaration that it would not win a single seat.
Published – 06 May 2026 07:00 IST
