Is Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s Left Democratic Front (LDF) government on track for a rare third consecutive term, or is anti-incumbency finally catching up with it?

For the Left, this is a life-or-death election. Kerala is the last red bastion. After losing West Bengal and Tripura, Kerala remained the final frontier. Losing it would be a huge setback—not just for Kerala’s CPI(M) but for the entire Left movement in the country—at a moment when the CPI enters its centenary.

Now, the objective indicators on the ground do point to anti-incumbency. The [2025] LSG [local self- government] election, the 2024 Lok Sabha election, and the byelection post-2021—in all of them, the Left performed dismally. The drubbing in the LSG election was particularly significant because, historically, even when the Left had been losing heavily in Lok Sabha or Assembly elections, it had retained a strong grassroots presence in local bodies. That changed in 2025.

But you can’t simply extrapolate that to 2026, for several reasons. Most importantly, in spite of this poor performance, the Left’s organisational vote has more or less remained intact. But in Kerala, just 1 or 2 per cent vote difference can wreak havoc with results. The X factor is going to be the BJP-NDA [National Democratic Alliance]. If they open up a genuine triangular contest across the State, it can go either way.

Over the last 20 years, except in the 2011 election in which the UDF won with a very slender margin, the Left has shown a pretty robust performance. So a rout of the kind seen in the 2024 Lok Sabha or the LSG election cannot simply be replicated in an Assembly election. The UDF has an edge; it seems to be the favourite. But it’s going to be [a] bitterly [fought contest] and could be touch and go in a number of constituencies.

Does the UDF’s sweep in the local body election point to a Congress-led comeback, or was that largely a win because of protest votes?

The UDF is definitely in a better position right now. Ten years of the Left’s rule has spawned real anti-incumbency. And 10 consecutive years in power has not happened before in Kerala except once, long ago. The Kerala voter’s spontaneous characteristic is to vote out the ruling dispensation after five years. The 2021 election was an exception because it was held under very special circumstances—the COVID pandemic—and the government held the fort exceptionally well. There was a surge of popular support for Vijayan for his decisive handling of the crisis. Welfare delivery during that period actually helped the Left retain power.

But considering the entire history of the Kerala voter who has always preferred to vote out the ruling dispensation after five years, the UDF looks to be in a better position. Whether that sentiment will translate into its coming to power is not clear yet. Recent opinion polls show that the LDF is not in as bad a situation as it is perceived to be. And Vijayan, in spite of his authoritarian tendencies, is seen as a man of action, a man who can deliver because of infrastructure development and other projects he has launched. He has some groundswell of support, not just among the Left but even among sections of the middle class.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Congress leader K.C. Venugopal, and BJP Leader K. Surendran at the Kerala Pulayar Mahasabha conference, in Kochi, on March 15, 2026. | Photo Credit: Thulasi Kakkat

The Congress has been in opposition for nearly a decade. It smells a chance now. Yet the party is riddled with factionalism and has a leadership vacuum, with everyone from Ramesh Chennithala to V.D. Satheesan and others throwing their hats into the ring. What is happening here?

Factionalism has always been an inborn characteristic of the Congress. It is no different now. But what is different is the disintegration of traditional power blocs. After A.K. Antony withdrew from active politics and with K. Karunakaran no more, the traditional “A” group and “I” group have actually broken down.

In that vacuum, a number of smaller groups have emerged, and now you have four or five people considering themselves fit to be the next Chief Minister: Chennithala, who feels he missed that chance in 2016 by a whisker; Satheesan as the sitting Leader of Opposition; K.C. Venugopal, arguably the most powerful Congressman in the entire country after Rahul Gandhi; K. Muraleedharan; and others. That kind of multi-cornered contestation for the top post has never happened before in Kerala; it was always either Karunakaran or Antony or, after Antony, Oommen Chandy.

Then, there is the 10-year hunger for power. Everybody wants to come back to some position of authority. Since Delhi seems far from their ambitions, Kerala is the only place where they can reclaim power. But having said all that, there is also a feeling within the party that if they don’t stand unitedly, this will be their last chance. If they lose again, it could signal the end of the UDF as a political alliance in Kerala.

The BJP claims to be a serious third force in Kerala for the first time. Is this hype, or could it actually break the State’s decades-old bipolar politics?

It’s both. The hype is classic of the BJP before every Kerala election: a propaganda blitzkrieg about how this is the watershed election, how it is going to cross the Rubicon. And when results come, it doesn’t reach even half of what it had predicted.

But the growth in its vote share is not a small thing. From around 6 per cent in 2011, it rose to roughly 15 per cent in 2016, although the 2025 LSG election showed a drop to about 14–15 per cent. In 2024, it came first in at least nine Assembly segments. It captured the Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation, which was a prestigious achievement for them. In Nemom—the only Assembly seat where the BJP had previously won (O. Rajagopal won in 2016)—the 2024 election showed that the BJP is the number-one party [in that segment].

There are about five to six constituencies across the State where the BJP has a very strong chance. I wouldn’t be surprised if they get one, two, or even more seats in 2026. That would be a watershed point in Kerala politics.

And this shift is visible empirically, not just statistically. You can see it in the people who were ardent secularists for generations, in family groups and social circles. The Christian vote will be particularly interesting to watch in 2026. According to CSDS [Centre for the Study of Developing Societies] data, about 5 per cent of the Christian vote went to the BJP in 2024. But the LSG election suggests that at least some of that has gone back to the Congress or the UDF. So the expectation that the BJP will make major inroads into Christian constituencies does not hold water right now.

There seems to be a strong consolidation of minority votes—both Muslim and Christian—behind the UDF, which is going to help them considerably. But among Hindu communities—both the Nairs and the Ezhavas—there is an increasing pull towards the NDA.

What are the real issues that will decide this election: youth unemployment, the remittance economy under pressure because of the Gulf crisis, or communal polarisation?

Every election has this tendency to rake up emotional issues over actual issues. Unemployment and the remittance crisis—exacerbated by the Gulf situation and wars—are real and serious. But unless you tie these hard issues to some emotional or communal angle, they don’t usually carry decisive weight during elections.

What actually agitates people—at least middle-class sections—is the kind of aggressive, less-than-democratic attitude of the LDF leaders, starting with Vijayan himself. Whether that will have a serious electoral impact is harder to say. Take the Sabarimala gold heist incident. Apart from [focussing on] the corruption angle, the UDF and the BJP have framed it communally: an anti-Hindu Left government doing what it always does. Never mind that the temple priest is also in custody. These are the issues that might have some impact.

The government, on the other hand, believes that its work on the ground—hospitals, educational institutions, infrastructure—is what will be decisive among common people. It could be right to some extent. But historically, elections have almost always been decided by the emotional factors played out in the moment.

M.G. Radhakrishnan: “In Wayanad, post-landslide, Central response was quite pathetic.” Here, search operations being carried out after the disaster, in Mundakkai village, Wayanad, on August 1, 2024. | Photo Credit: FRANCIS MASCARENHAS/REUTERS

Kerala is the one State where issues from outside also influence voting patterns. For example, attacks on minorities and the Centre-State fiscal standoff. Do these factors matter at this point?

Yes, definitely. They will at least limit the momentum that the BJP is hoping to build. There have been a number of instances. One of them was [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi’s recent visit to Thiruvananthapuram, where the entire media said he would announce major projects in Kerala, but he never did. In Wayanad, post-landslide, the Central response was quite pathetic. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences that Kerala has been demanding—which even the High Court took up—was dismissed by the Centre when it told the court that it had absolutely no such plan. So the Left’s constant campaign that the BJP has been treating Kerala badly is based on genuine traction on the ground, especially after the Wayanad disaster made the Centre’s indifference so conspicuous.

But overall, the election in Kerala will be business as usual, with voting along predictable political and communal patterns. The concrete issues we would like to see debated don’t carry as much weight as we want them to.

Will the BJP’s double-engine government argument then work here?

It would be very difficult. When I speak to people, I don’t see much traction for it.

If the Left comes back, will Vijayan continue to lead, or could new faces emerge?

The party is so dependent on him right now; he takes every decision, from the very minor to the most significant. Even when stalwarts like E.M.S. [Namboodiripad] or E.K. Nayanar were there, there were other leaders of comparable stature. Now, you have a complete supreme leader, and everyone else looks like a Lilliput. He has the halo of not just being infallible, but of the saviour of the last Left frontier. And there is no face on the horizon who can substitute for him. So as of now, if the LDF comes back, he leads. There would only be a change if he decides it himself. Everyone thought K.K. Shailaja could be considered—and she deserves to be—but the power dynamics of the party is not likely to allow anyone else to be chosen.

There is a view that the eminent poet K. Satchidanandan, a Left supporter, has expressed, and which many in the Left quietly agree with, that a third term might not be good for the party.

A lot of people think so, including many in the Left. And it’s a valid point to a large extent. Ten years in power has evidently eroded the party’s ideological core and its commitment to the poor. That happens to every political party in power for more than a decade. Degeneration creeps in.

The Left government seems more inclined towards industrialisation and capital than a Congress government might have been.

That change is happening. But it is also inevitable to a large extent because Kerala’s society has transformed. It is a middle-class-dominated society now. The working class, as it existed 20 years ago, no longer exists in Kerala in the same size. Kerala has become one of the top 10 richest States in the country in the last 20 years. No political party, including the Left, can ignore middle-class concerns and aspirations.

But I would give the Left some credit for this: in spite of its interest in so-called neoliberal projects, this government has done things that actually bode well [for it]: public health investments, upgrading public hospitals and educational institutions to a genuinely higher level. Welfare pension has gone up from Rs.600 to Rs.1,600 and then to Rs.2,000 subsequently. Around 62 lakh people are receiving some form of pension. So they have, to a large extent, balanced their act without antagonising the aspirational classes while not entirely abandoning the poor.

What I would definitively criticise is the complete absence of democratic discourse—within the party and within the polity: the way they have treated opposition protests, criticism in the media, and ASHA workers’ demands. The Left seems to operate under the impression that big roads and infrastructure will bail them out. That need not be true. C.P. Ramaswami Iyer, the former Dewan of Travancore and one of the architects of modern Travancore’s infrastructure, was forced to flee the State because of a public uprising against him. That is something this government will have to [take into] account.