Never before have Kerala voters brushed aside religious, caste and even party affiliations to rise up as one to discipline the state's most powerful political party.

With the voters on an avenging spree, the CPM's tally fell precipitously to 26 from the 63 it had won in 2021, its worst after 2001. After this loss, the CPM has fallen off the map of political India. The LDF it led shrunk to a paltry 35 from a towering 99 in 2021. Kerala Congress (Mani), till now the third biggest party in the LDF, drew a blank.

The UDF, as Opposition leader V D Satheesan predicted, soared to 102 seats. The Congress won 63 of these, as good as the 63 it won in the last landslide of 2001. Its biggest ally, the Muslim League, won 22 of the 27 seats it contested.

In constituencies where the UDF presence had shrivelled since 2016 -- Nemom, Kazhakoottam and Chathannoor -- the BJP was the natural beneficiary of the voters’ disgust with the LDF. Otherwise, there were no gains for the BJP. Despite winning three seats for the first time, its vote share remained stuck at the 2021 level; from 11.30 per cent in 2021 it inched almost imperceptibly to 11.42 per cent. 

The UDF's landslide win was the upshot of two disruptions. One an inside job and the other, a mass awakening, a collective breaking of fences for a common cause.

'Life saving' act
The 'inside job' is the determination of ordinary CPM workers to put an end to the fully blown authoritarian tendencies within the party and its attendant troubles like corruption and nepotism. This CPM defeat, in a way, is a 'life saving' act set in motion by the CPM itself.

Constituencies that were considered impregnable CPM fortresses -- Taliparamaba, Payyannur, Thrikkarippur, Perambra, and Balussery -- were taken over by the UDF with surprising ease. Even during the 2001 landslide, these seats were safe with the CPM.

The CPM would probably prefer to keep as a secret even some of its wins in its unassailable bastions.

K V Sumesh won Azheekode with a margin of 349 votes; last time it was 6141 votes. C Ravindranath won Manalur with just 126 votes; CPM's Murali Perunelly's margin in 2021 was 29,876.

K N Balagopal's lead in Kottarakkara was 1012 votes; last time it was 10,814. In 2021, the highest winning margin was in Mattannur: 60,693 for CPM's K K Shylaja. This time in Mattannur, CPM's V K Sanoj's margin is 14,168.

Most humbling is perhaps Pinarayi Vijayan's performance. In 2021, it was 50,123 votes, the second highest in 2021. This time a young Congress candidate, V P Abdul Rasheed, pared it down to 19,247 with the swashbuckling irreverence of a novice.

It is widely acknowledged that these constituencies could not have been won, or badly dented, by the UDF without the retributive rage of the traditional CPM voter.

List that lost the fight
In hindsight, the CPM lost the moment its candidates’ list was published. The list exemplified hubris. Concerns of party workers were treated with utmost disdain.

T I Madhusoodanan, who was accused of looting from the party's martyr fund, was pompously fielded from Payyannur. Whistleblower V Kunhikrishnan, a party worker known to symbolise renunciatory Leftist values, was thrown out.

In Taliparamba, too, local dissent was swatted aside and P K Syamala, the wife of CPM state secretary M V Govindan, was named as the party candidate. Party veteran T K Govindan came out in rebellion and the party, in a display of insensitivity known only in dynasties that have lost touch with reality, announced that even the traitor's (T K Govindan's) wife was not with him.

The CPM's despotic hope was that its forts could easily provide democratic legitimacy to even discredited candidates. The CPM workers, in turn, demonstrated who the real boss is.

The UDF master stroke was to keep away and let the resentment channel towards one point: the rebels. It played second fiddle.

Both Kunhikrishnan and Govindan were UDF Independents. Ditto was the UDF tactic for disgruntled CPM veteran G Sudhakaran. In the case of three-time CPM MLA Aisha Potty, the Congress co-opted her into the party.

Making of Kerala story
The other reason for the landslide was the rare fence-breaking ritual indulged in by Kerala's voters. Ignoring religious and caste divides, they came together in response to a challenge thrown at Kerala by the BJP

The most outrageous remark during the 2026 Assembly election campaign was not the slut-shaming of U Pratibha by Kayalmkulam's UDF convenor and Muslim League leader A Irshad. It was BJP's Guruvayur candidate B Gopalakrishnan's. He began his campaign with this question: "Why hasn't there been a single Hindu MLA from Guruvayur in the past 50 years?"

For the first time, an improvised explosive device was manufactured by the BJP exclusively for Kerala. Love Jihad was imported from Uttar Pradesh. And Sabarimala women's entry had fallen into the lap of the Kerala BJP.

Guruvayur should be considered a highly unlikely choice because of the Assembly's deeply secular nature. When BJP's Suresh Gopi won the Thrissur Lok Sabha seat in 2024 with a commendable margin of nearly 75,000 votes, Guruvayur was the only Assembly segment where he cut a sorry figure. He was third.

Still, if Gopalakrishnan had decided to explode the crude bomb in Guruvayur, it could be only because he and his party were somehow convinced that Kerala can be manipulated. The intended zone of wreckage was not Guruvayur but Kerala.

Towards the end of the campaign, all talk of 'vikasit Keralam' was set aside by the BJP, and a torrent of communal toxins was let loose.

BJP state president Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that the Muslim League, "which remote-controls the Congress", will demand six ministers and a deputy chief minister’s post if the UDF comes to power.

BJP's Kattakkada candidate and former BJP state president P K Krishnadas revived the vampire-themed thriller called love jihad. "If a government is formed under the LDF or the UDF, Muslim men faking love will lure girls in Hindu and Christian families to faraway lands for terrorist activities," he said.

Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister and Union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan flew down from Delhi and said that if the Congress supported by Jamaat-e-Islami wins, crackers will burst in Pakistan. Beware the Muslim was the message.

The CPM, too, silently let Islamophobia fester. Forget rebuke, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan kept patronising SNDP Yogam general secretary Vellappally Natesan, who wore his Muslim hatred like a badge of honour.

Are other communities in Kerala scared of the Muslim, as the BJP suggested. The answer, given in a chorus by Hindus, Christians and Muslims together, was a resounding 'NO'.

Small but exhilarating reels of this spectacle of secularism in Kerala was witnessed in Malappuram's Thavanur and in Kochi. In this constituency, where only a Muslim candidate won, it was a Christian, V S Joy, who emerged victorious. In Kochi, on the other hand, it was a Muslim (Mohammad Shiyas) who won from a seat normally set aside for a Christian.