Express News Service
CHENNAI: With just months to go for Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, the puzzling question of a third front has resurfaced. With actor-politician Kamal Haasan’s MNM and Seeman’s NTK planning to enter the electoral battle without any ties to major Dravidian players, the potential for a non-Dravidian front is being widely discussed.
However, an analysis of vote share garnered by various parties shows that the AIADMK and DMK have managed to secure a combined 60 per cent or more votes in every election since 1989. When alliance partners are accounted for, the Dravidian majors and their allies have garnered between 70 per cent to 89 per cent of the vote share in every Assembly election. Only on three occasions have non-Dravidian fronts managed a respectable vote share – Congress with 19.83 per cent in 1989, DMDK with 8.38 per cent in 2006 and the rainbow alliance of the People’s Welfare Front with 15 per cent in 2016.