Capitalising on changing Tamil voter mood

C. Joseph Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) has established its popularity and stands to emerge as the single largest party in the 2026 Tamil Nadu State Assembly elections. Clearly, voters decided to give up on the two Dravidian parties, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), and chose to go with this newcomer. His bravado in not seeking an alliance with other parties and going it alone has won the day. Equally, Mr. Vijay was ready to be ‘Tamil’ in his own way, but he also spoke and did politics in a manner that would appeal to untutored and ingénue voters — evident in his road shows, and his one-liners. Spectacle and banality have prevailed against old-style political tendentiousness and rhetoric.

The lead-up to the elections was predictable. The campaigns had to deal with issues that have been the staple of political exchange in the State since the DMK came to power in 2021: the Dravidian model of growth and social justice versus the Hindutva model of authoritarian unity and erosion of rights; corruption and misgovernance of an incumbent party versus rosy promises of honest, accountable and equally welfarist governance, presided over by the AIADMK, under the aegis of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).