Over the years, DMK and Congress have forged a mutually complementary electoral tie-up

The presence of the Congress in the DMK-led coalition has become a talking point in political circles, with the two parties not finalising a seat-sharing arrangement for the Assembly election in Tamil Nadu so far.

The observations expressed publicly by Praveen Chakravarty, a Congress functionary, about the value of his party in an alliance, have created a buzz. Though a precise assessment has been difficult in view of electoral tie-ups almost continuously for over 20 years, the value of his party, he claims, hovers between 10% and 12%.

Notwithstanding his claim, a perusal of the data regarding the Congress’ vote share in percentage and the party’s vote share in contested seats for the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections since 2004 reveals that except on one occasion, the national party did not perform better than its senior partner, the DMK. The 2014 Lok Sabha election results were not considered as the two parties did not remain together.

Invariably, the DMK, being the lead party in the alliance, finished on top both in terms of overall vote share and vote share in contested seats. It was in 2004, when the two parties came together in the State after a gap of 24 years, that the Congress registered higher vote share in contested seats than the DMK. Even then, the margin was very thin — 1.1 percentage point. At the all-India level, the election assumed importance as the national party had returned to power after a gap of eight years.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, even though the Congress lagged the DMK with regard to the vote share in contested seats, the margin was less than one percentage point. On all other occasions, the gap ranged from around two percentage points (2006 Assembly election) to 6.47 percentage points (2001 Assembly poll).

The narrow gap in terms of vote share in contested seats signals a high degree of cohesion among constituents of the given coalition and that all the parties in the alliance benefit from one another. If any party in a coalition fares much better than its allies, the general interpretation is that the party in question enjoys a distinct advantage in terms of numerical strength. However, the data since 2004 do not give any such indication about the Congress.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha election at the peak of the Congress’ unpopularity, it put up nominees in all 39 constituencies. Many leaders had opted out of contesting at that time. The party did not win any seat and its vote share was 4.31%. In the southern districts, where the national party had polled 8.2%, its vote share was perceptibly higher than in the rest of the State. Only in Kanniyakumari did the party finish second, and in all other constituencies, it had forfeited deposits.