A data-driven analysis of 234 constituencies across 3 elections. Explore party dominance, seat flips, swing patterns, and 2026 battlegrounds.
Vijay's TVK won 108 of 233 contested seats, polling 1,72,26,209 votes (34.92%) and converting that to 46.2% of the assembly. The wave landed hardest in Chennai & Suburbs (+18.5 seats above weight) and was absorbed in the Cauvery Delta. Vijay personally won Perambur by 53,715 votes (26.28% of polled).
Of 329 pre-poll flagged dummy pairs, 263 actually contested and 152 targeted majors lost. In the strict test, zero losses had dummies covering the margin. In the inclusive test: TIRUKKOYILUR by 285 votes (0.13%) and PALANI by 693 votes (0.33%). The wave drowned the mechanism, but the mechanism is intact.
M.K. Stalin lost Kolathur by 8,795 votes to V.S. Babu of TVK, his own former associate. He had won the same seat in 2021 by 70,384 votes. He's one of 93 sitting MLAs who defended their seat in 2026 and lost. 64 of those defeats came from TVK directly. Of 234 outgoing incumbents: 56 held their seat, 93 lost it, 11 lost a different seat too, 7 won by shifting, and 67 are off the ballot entirely. A 23.9% same-seat retention rate, the lowest in modern TN history.
Median MLA age dropped to 52, a 12-year compression from the cohort it replaced. TVK's median MLA is 44, against 59 for DMK and 57 for AIADMK. 41 MLAs are under 40, 35 of them from TVK alone. 22 women elected — 13 from TVK, 0 from DMK. Two of the youngest five (both 28-year-old TVK MLAs with Master's degrees) are women. The whole assembly is 53% graduate-or-higher, the most-educated in TN history.
DMK went from 133 seats in 2021 to 59 in 2026. The collapse was not uniform. Their strongest regions in 2021, Chennai, Central, and the North, each dropped 17 to 19 percentage points of vote share. Chennai & Suburbs alone went from 31 of 37 wins to 2 of 37. Of the 93 seats DMK held in 2021 and lost in 2026, 65 went directly to TVK.
| Constituency | Party | Swing |
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| # | Constituency | District | Type | Party | All 3 Wins | Lowest Margin | Highest Margin |
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| Constituency | District | Type | 2016 Winner | 2016 Party | Margin | 2021 Winner | 2021 Party | Margin | Flip |
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