TN Elections 2026

Defeat of Sitting CM

• Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin was defeated in his Kolathur Assembly constituency, a seat he had represented thrice since 2011.
• Stalin is the fourth sitting Chief Minister in Tamil Nadu to lose an Assembly election.
• In the past, P.S. Kumarasamy Raja (1952), M. Bhakthavatchalam (1967), and Jayalalithaa (1996) were sitting Chief Ministers who lost elections.
• K. Kamaraj, another former Chief Minister, was also defeated in 1967, but he was not in office at the time; he lost from the Virudhunagar Assembly constituency.

Past History

• In what is clearly a tectonic shift in Tamil Nadu politics, the fledgling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) led by actor Joseph C. Vijay has emerged as the single largest party in the 2026 Assembly elections.
• With the Congress dominating until 1967, the ecosystem post that shifted to a Dravidian framework.
• Since 1967, Tamil Nadu has been dominated by one of the two major Dravidian parties — the DMK and the AIADMK.
• While the DMK has enjoyed two successive terms once initially (1967 and 1971), it did not sustain this for the entirety of its second term.
• The AIADMK has been able to come back to power three times consequently, under the leadership of M.G. Ramachandran (1977, 1980, and 1984), and once again under Jayalalithaa (2011 and 2016).
• Other than this, the State has been alternating power between the DMK and the AIADMK.
• In 2006, when Tamil Nadu last saw a hung Assembly, the PMK offered support to the DMK without sharing power in the ministry.

Resignation

• DMK president and outgoing Chief Minister M.K. Stalin said the Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) had secured only 17.43 lakh more votes than his party, a margin of just 3.52 percentage points over the DMK’s vote share.
• M.K. Stalin resigns as Tamil Nadu Chief Minister.
• His resignation was sent to the Governor’s office in Lok Bhavan.
• As per convention, the Governor is expected to request the incumbent Chief Minister to continue as interim Chief Minister, until the new government assumes office.

Results

• TVK was emerging as the single largest party with 108 seats in the 17th Tamil Nadu Assembly election.
• It fell just 10 seats short of the halfway mark in the 234-member House.
• The party secured an impressive 35% vote share, polling over 1.6 crore votes.
• Vijay himself won from both Perambur and Tiruchi East.
• J. Jayalalithaa won two assembly seats in the 1991 Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly elections.
• Contesting from both Kangeyam and Bargur, she registered handsome victories in both.
• Following the AIADMK landslide victory, she became the Chief Minister for the first time.
• Later she retained the Bargur seat and resigning from Kangeyam.
• Perhaps for the first time, the 17th Tamil Nadu Assembly will include a member who had previously served as a legislator in another House.
• This distinction will be achieved by N. Anand, alias ‘Bussy’ Anand, general secretary of Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam.
• Minister K.R. Periyakaruppan lost the Assembly election from Tirupattur in Sivaganga district by just one vote.
• In Edappadi, AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K. Palaniswami recorded the highest victory margin in the State, winning by 98,110 votes.
• The Secular Progressive Alliance (SPA), led by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), has been pushed to second place with leads in 73 seats — a steep fall from 159 seats in 2021.
• DMK was reduced to the principal Opposition with 59 seats in what became a three-cornered contest.
• While the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK)-led coalition, which includes the BJP and the PMK, has come third with leads in 54 seats.
• AIADMK finished third with around 47 seats.
• Naam Tamilar Katchi, led by Seeman, which contested all 234 seats, once again failed to open its account.
• In terms of vote share, however, the three formations are remarkably close — TVK: 35.09%, SPA: 31.4%, and the AIADMK-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA): 27.2%.
• It marks the second time Tamil Nadu voters, known for delivering decisive mandates for a single party or front (DMK alliance, 2006), have produced a hung Assembly.
• 1952 (Madras State): The first election saw the Indian National Congress (INC) win 152 seats out of 375, short of a majority, but they formed the government under C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji).
• C. Joseph Vijay is set to become the first Chief Minister not from either of the two principal Dravidian parties since the DMK first captured power in the State in 1967.
• He is likely to become the first minority Chief Minister (Christian Chief Minister) in Tamil Nadu.
• Vijay secured a commanding 34.92 per cent vote share in its maiden election.
• Historically, third-party aspirants in Tamil Nadu have struggled to cross the 10 per cent threshold.
• Vijay’s TVK surpassed MGR's 1977 record of 30.6% vote share in a maiden election.
• Unlike MGR, who had an alliance with CPI(M) and IUML in his first election, Vijay's TVK contested alone in 233 of the 234 seats.
• On 30 June 1977, M.G.R. was sworn in as the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, becoming the first actor to become the chief minister in the Republic of India
• For the first time in 59 years a party other than the DMK or AIADMK has led the state in vote share.
• N.T. Rama Rao (TDP): Founded the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in March 1982 and led it to victory in the Andhra Pradesh assembly elections in January 1983, becoming CM in less than a year.
• Founded in February 2024, the TVK party is set to assume power in just over two years.
• The ADMK party was founded on 17 October 1972 by M. G. Ramachandran (M.G.R.) and swept to power, defeating the DMK in the 1977 assembly election after 5 years of party formation.
• Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was founded in Delhi by Arvind Kejriwal on 26 November 2012.
• First, it came to power in Delhi on 28 December 2013, with Arvind Kejriwal taking oath as the Chief Minister.