Onmanorama pollmeter tracks 12 closely-fought constituencies across different phases of campaign: Nemom, Manjeshwar, Palakkad, Kunnathunad, Pala, Kottarakkara, Peravoor, Thripunithura, Ambalappuzha, Taliparamba, Payyanur and Nattika. This is the final part on Nattika, where Onmanorama captures emerging trends from ground-level feed. Read the first and second parts here.

Kochi: The final days of campaigning in Nattika have been anything but quiet. The flashpoint in the last leg of the campaign in the coastal constituency was the arrest of Ahsar Majeed, a former aide of NDA candidate and incumbent MLA CC Mukundhan, which sharpened the ‘narrative’ war between the LDF and NDA. The arrest came after the LDF election committee filed a complaint alleging cyber attacks, targeted defamation and caste-based abuse against its candidate, Geetha Gopi. 

Sensing the danger, the NDA responded with urgency and called it a “manufactured conspiracy”. Mukundhan’s sit-in protest outside the DySP office demanding the release of Majeed wasn’t just about an aide; it was a signal: this election, for him, is now existential. 

But the paradox is that while the controversy injected urgency into the NDA camp, it hasn’t fully translated into momentum. Beneath the churn, the fundamentals haven’t collapsed. The Left still walks in with an edge, just not the comfort it once took for granted. 

​The Mukundhan surge that stalled midway
Mukundhan’s dramatic crossover from CPI to BJP was always going to disrupt equations. And it did. He cut into the Left’s aura of invincibility, turned cadre anger into a campaign issue, and made the BJP look like a serious contender rather than a peripheral player. 

But the contradiction at the heart of his campaign never quite resolved itself. BJP workers who once campaigned against him were now defending him. That mismatch, evident at the booth level, seems to have weakened the surge. Mukundhan’s personal goodwill exists, yes. But elections here are rarely won on personality alone.

LDF dented, not dismantled
The Left’s strategy, as seen over the past weeks, has been brutally simple: shift the election from performance to principle. Label Mukundhan a defector, consolidate cadre, and fall back on organisational muscle. That firewall seems to have held. 

Despite murmurs of anti-incumbency over stalled infrastructure, underwhelming development, and local grievances, the LDF’s booth-level machinery and ideological loyalty make them confident that there will be no large-scale erosion. 

Analytical ground checks indicate that the LDF’s strength in Nattika is structural rather than just personality-driven. The 28,000-vote victory margin in 2021 provides a massive buffer that even a significant defection struggles to erase. Furthermore, the LDF’s dominance in the 2025 local body polls across panchayats such as Valappad and Anthikad suggests that its grassroots machinery remains intact. 

UDF: the silent accumulator
If there’s one camp quietly smiling, it’s the UDF. Sunil Laloor has run a relatively low-decibel but persistent campaign, positioning himself as the “reasonable alternative” amid chaos. 

The UDF’s bet is not on waves, but on leakage. A few percentage points from disillusioned Left voters, a slice of confused NDA supporters, and suddenly, the math tightens. This is not hypothetical. Nattika has flipped twice before for TN Prathapan, even though the geography of the old Nattika constituency was very different. Though Laloor eyes an upset win, the UDF is more likely to remain the first runner-up this time too.

The final reading
The casteist remark against Gopi and the arrest of Mukundan’s aide have allowed the Left to move past the “payment seat” allegations and re-engage its cadre on an ideological front. By framing the election as a choice between “party discipline” and “greed for power”, the LDF has largely shored up its defences. 

While Nattika is witnessing its most competitive race in decades, the fragmentation of the anti-LDF vote between the NDA and UDF works in Geetha Gopi’s favour. The fortress may be rattled, but the organisational floor of the Left remains high enough to prevent an upset, even if the final victory margin declines sharply. 

Strip away the rhetoric, and three truths emerge. Firstly, Mukundhan has hurt the LDF, but not enough to uproot it. Secondly, the NDA has expanded relevance but remains structurally constrained. Thirdly, the UDF has found an opportunity, but it depends entirely on vote split arithmetic. These leave Nattika in a familiar, if narrower, conclusion. The Left is ahead but no longer cruising. And unless the last-week turbulence triggers a silent, decisive shift inside polling booths, Nattika is likely to stay red, just with cracks now visible to the naked eye.
Read the first and second parts here.