Onmanorama Assembly Poll Survey 2: BJP may emerge as credible third force in Kerala

In two minds about BJP
The Onmanorama poll indicates that Kerala has moved from being dismissive about the BJP to being conflicted about the party. If there are those who want the BJP to remain an insignificant party, there seems to be an almost equal number in Kerala now that find it relevant.

Respondents, who are certain that the BJP tally would be zero, is 33.6 per cent. But a near equal 33.3 per cent expects the BJP to win more than 10 seats; 2508 said 'zero' and a very near number, 2486, said '10-plus'.

Of the respondents, 1766 (23.66%) said the BJP could win between 1-5 seats, and 705 (9.44%) said it could be between 6 and 10. Together, those who expect the BJP to win one or more made up 66.4 per cent of the respondents.

This is significant as the party had won an Assembly seat in Kerala only once, in 2016. Then, BJP's O Rajagopal trounced CPM's V Sivankutty by 8671 votes.

The BJP, however, could not hold on to its only seat as Sivankutty staged a politically consequential comeback five years later in 2021 by defeating BJP's Kummanam Rajasekharan by a smaller margin of 3949 votes. After Kummanam's loss, Rajagopal's 2016 win seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime bumper for the BJP.

Why BJP could win more than 10
The Lok Sabha elections in 2024 changed the perception. The BJP won the Thrissur Lok Sabha seat with a stupendous margin of 74,686 votes.

Equally impressive was the fact that the BJP had emerged first in 11 Assembly constituencies in 2024; six constituencies in Thrissur district (Manalur, Ollur, Thrissur, Nattika, Irinjalakkuda, and Puthukkad) and five in Thiruvananthapuram (Attingal, Kattakkada, Kazhakkottam, Vattiyoorkavu and Nemom).

That was not all. In Haripad and Kayamkulam, both part of the Alappuzha Lok Sabha constituency, BJP's Sobha Surendran came encouragingly close to a win. In Harippad, she was behind Congress's K C Venugopal by only 1345 votes. In Kayamkulam, the margin was 1441 votes.

Here's one more statistic. In 2024 LS polls, the BJP had also stood second in nine Assembly segments: Manjeshwar, Kasaragod, Palakkad, Harippad, Kayamkulam, Varkala, Thiruvananthapuram, Kovalam and Neyyatinkara.

So the party can rightfully pin hopes on 15-20 seats.

Why BJP will not win any seat
If '10-plus' can therefore seem realistic, the BJP getting stuck in 'zero' also looks probable.

First of all, motivations that spur voting behaviour during Lok Sabha and state-level polls are different. In 2021 Assembly polls, the NDA's vote share was 12.41 per cent. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, it was nearly 20 per cent. And now in the 2025 local body polls, the NDA share has settled to its below 15 per cent slot.

Secondly, the victory in Nemom, the only Assembly seat the BJP had ever won, could have been just luck, the result of UDF complacency.

There is a perception that Nemom had favoured the BJP in 2016 only because the Congress had fielded candidates of insignificant allies. When Rajagopal won, the UDF candidate was of JD(U), which had at that time just defected from the LDF.

In 2011, when Rajagopal catapulted the BJP to the second position and the party's vote share soared to 37.49 per cent from an earthy 5.59 per cent as if freed from gravity, the UDF's candidate was Charupara Ravi of the now defunct Socialist Janata (Democratic) Party.

However, in 2021, the Congress only had to field a popular face like K Muraleedharan and corner a respectable minimum share of votes (25%) to keep the BJP in second place.

Election history can reveal why BJP candidates, except in Nemom in 2016, has never progressed beyond the second position. Whenever the BJP has been trapped in the second spot, the LDF or UDF candidate in the third spot has pocketed more than 20 per cent votes.

The 2021 Assembly results in Maneshwar (CPM - 23.57%), Malampuzha (Congress - 21.7%), Palakkad (LDF - 24%), Attingal (RSP - 25%), Chathannoor (Congress - 25%), Kazhakuttam (Congress - 23.85%), Vatiyoorkavu (Congress - 25.76%) and Nemom (Congress - 25%) are examples of this pattern. When Rajagopal won in 2016, the UDF vote share was just 9.70%.

The reasoning is that since the two major fronts can easily capture 20% votes in any constituency in Kerala, including in BJP's citadel Nemom, it would be difficult for the BJP to win even a single seat.

The Onmanorama poll ran for a week, from February 19 to 25.