With seat-sharing negotiations between political allies in Tamil Nadu mostly out in the open, the final numbers have revealed some interesting findings. After three weeks of seat-sharing negotiations between allies, the State's regional parties have walked away as clear winners.
For the upcoming elections, the state's local parties have retained a lion's share of assembly seats for themselves, while allies and even national parties like the Congress and Left have been relegated to the fringe.
The ruling AIADMK, for instance, has announced that it will contest 227 out of 234 assembly seats which is a significant increase from its 2006 and 2011 seat share where the party contested in 182 and 203 constituencies, respectively.
Considering the fact that the party's smaller allies will contest the remaining seven seats under the AIADMK's poll symbol, it effectively means that the AIADMK will fight the upcoming Assembly Assembly polls completely on its own.
Despite the 25-year-long history of anti-incumbency, the AIADMK is upbeat about its chances in 2016, invoking what it calls a pro-incumbency wave.
"This yoyo between the AIADMK and DMK, which has been happening for the last five times, like you rightly said. I think this time, it will be decisively broken because I actually sense tremendous pro-incumbency, " AIADMK Spokesperson and candidate K Pandiarajan said.
Other local parties are also equally upbeat about their electoral chances. The DMK, which occupies a paltry 23 seats after its rout in the 2011 elections has let go of just 41 seats to its main alliance partner Congress, and is now left with 193 seats for itself.
In 2011, the DMK had given 63 seats to the Congress, while it contested on just 119 seats.
Even Vijayakanth's DMDK has bagged 124 seats in the newly-formed third front while its allies - the Left parties, VCK, and Vaiko's MDMK have together settled for 110 seats.
The DMK is confident about its chances since it has always succeeded in a multi-cornered contest. "This has happened in 2006, in 2009. All the times when there was a multi-cornered contest, the DMK was victorious. Even in 1989, when there was a five-cornered contest, the DMK was victorious. So, we are confident that in a multi-cornered contest, DMK will emerge victorious," DMK spokesperson A Saravanan said.
Here is a look at the seat share of the parties in the previous elections in the 234-member assembly:
AIADMK
2016 seat share: 227
2011 seat share: 203
2006 seat share: 182
2001 seat share: 196
DMK
2016 seat share: 193 DMK, 41 Congress
2011 seat share: 119 DMK, 63 Congress, 52 allies
2006 seat share: 130 DMK, 48 Congress, 56 allies
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