Will Kerala vote against the national mood?

John Cheeran
03 April 2014, 07:12 PM IST

Who will gain the upper hand in Lok Sabha elections in Kerala? If opinion polls are any indication, UDF should do fairly well.

Immediate factors bode well. Chief minister Oommen Chandy has said the elections would be a referendum on the performance of his government. It was quite a bold step for a CM to put his government on line. To his credit, Chandy has overcome the deleterious effects of scathing observations made against him by the high court single bench by securing a favourable verdict from the division bench on Tuesday. The damage has been contained, or LDF would have turned the HC remarks into a campaign agenda.

The worst that opinion polls portend for UDF is 10 seats. Last Friday, NDTV split the 20 seats equally between UDF and LDF. Times Now-C Voter seat projections on February 16 had set Kerala agog when it forecast a BJP win in two seats without specifying them. That survey, too, had favoured UDF to win at least 10 seats with LDF coming a close second.

Two rounds of surveys done by CSDS for CNN-IBN clearly give the edge to UDF. The latest findings, released on Tuesday, forecast up to 17 seats for UDF. They are consistent with what the CSDS projected in February.

A survey done by C-Fore for Asianet also gives the advantage to UDF, predicting 11 seats to the combine and nine to LDF. The survey expects LDF to make gains in north Kerala and UDF to dominate central and southern Kerala.

This then is the big message -- Congress may maintain its edge over LDF in Kerala. The surveys indicate that despite price rise, solar scam, the Western Ghats row, Chandy may succeed in neutralizing the anti-incumbency factor.

It has to be remembered that in 2009, when CPM's V S Achuthanandan was chief minister, anti-incumbency had helped UDF win 16 seats. In 2004, when A K Antony was chief minister, LDF had cashed in on anti-incumbency and schisms in Congress to win a record 18 seats.

Of course, these surveys can go wrong. But at the moment they indicate that unlike across India, anti-UPA and anti-Congress sentiment is not strong in Kerala. But in Kerala, electoral contests have been very, very close affairs. In 2009, Congress won Kozhikode by 838 votes and LDF clinched Palakkad by 1,820 votes from an electorate of 11 lakh voters. And in 2004, IFDP's P C Thomas won Muvattupuzha by 529 votes and CPM's K S Manoj defeated V M Sudheeran by 1,009 votes in Alappuzha. These results show how every frown, tic and sneeze of voters can determine the shape of our Parliament.