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Early counting data for the big state elections of 2026 has thrown up a change in many a political script, while heralding a day of watching the counting with bated breath. According to data from the Election Commission of India, as of 10.45 am, when only 2-4 rounds of votes had been counted, West Bengal was a cliffhanger, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) marginally ahead of the All India Trinamool Congress. The binary of Tamil Nadu centred around Dravidian politics, alternating between the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), has been disrupted by the resolute emergence of actor Vijay's Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) as a third axis. In Kerala, the anti-incumbency cycle, disrupted in 2021, has been restored. Amid this, Assam and Puducherry voted for the status quo.
West Bengal: BJP breakthrough
In 2021, AITC's 47.9% vote share converted to 213 of 294 seats (72%), while BJP's 38.1% gave it 77 seats (26%). A gap of about 10 percentage points in vote share produced a near-threefold gap in legislative strength—a textbook runner-up penalty under the first-past-the-post voting system that India follows. That year, the BJP finished runner-up in 201 constituencies, signalling broad presence but inefficient vote distribution: its support piled up in seats it won decisively (19 wins above 10% margin) or lost narrowly (16 second-place finishes inside 5%).
In 2026, BJP has gained vote share, and this is also translating into more seats for it. As of 10.45 am, it had a vote share of 45% and was leading in 88 of the 152 seats for which results are available (the state has a total of 294 seats). It was largely a binary contest, and the other parties, like the Indian National Congress (INC) and Communist parties, barely registered a presence in seats. For BJP, of its 88 leads, only 4 leads were by a margin of less than 2 percentage points, while 13 were by a margin of 2-5 percentage points; further, more than two-thirds of leads were by more than 10 percentage points.
Tamil Nadu: Vijay’s third axis
Tamil Nadu alternated power between the DMK-led and AIADMK-led alliances in every assembly election from 1991 to 2011—five straight swings. That pattern was broken in 2016, when AIADMK retained the state in 2016, which would also be its late leader Jayalalithaa's last campaign. With the AIADMK in disarray, the DMK alliance wrested the state back in 2021. But 2026 is turning into a whole other story, thanks to the overwhelming performance of the TVK, the new party floated by popular actor-turned-politician Vijay.
As of 10.45 am, TVK was leading all parties. It was leading in 98 seats, with a 33.6% vote share, with many of those seats coming at the expense of the DMK. The DMK, on its part, is down from 159 seats to 44 seats, with a massive drop in vote share, from 45.3% to 30.8%. Tamil Nadu is hurtling towards a hung mandate, and Vijay is holding many cards when it comes to government formation.
Assam: from delimitation to consolidation
Assam voted on an electoral map where the constituency boundaries were redrawn for the first time since 1976 (an exercise called ‘delimitation’). In this backdrop, the ruling BJP-led government looks set to return to power with an even greater majority. As of 10.45 am, the BJP-led alliance was leading in 95 seats, a gain of 20 seats over 2021, and its gains were spread across the state’s six main geographical regions that also provide unique electoral contexts.
Post-delimitation, the state's six electoral zones remain, but seat counts within them shifted. In 2026, the BJP-led alliance is consolidating its grip on zones where it fared well in 2021 (Upper, Lower, and North Assam) and made inroads in other zones (Central and Barak Valley). In 2021, its strongest region was Upper Assam, which comprised 28 seats in 2021. This is the Ahom heartland and tea-belt, and the BJP alliance won 22 seats.
For the Congress-led alliance, Lower Assam (Goalpara-Dhubri-Barpeta-Nagaon), a Muslim-majority belt, was its mainstay in 2021, giving it 23 seats. Another significant zone was the Barak Valley (Cachar-Karimganj-Hailakandi), the Bengali-Muslim majority area that it won 9-6 in 2021. Both these areas saw the heaviest delimitation reshuffles, directly affecting where the Congress alliance could convert votes. In both these areas, the Congress alliance has lost seats to the BJP alliance and the state.
Kerala: return of anti-incumbency
From 1980 to 2016, Kerala had one rule: no incumbent government wins. The Left Democratic Front (LDF) and United Democratic Front (UDF) traded power for nine consecutive cycles. Pinarayi Vijayan and the Communist parties-led LDF broke the pattern in 2021, becoming the first incumbent to retain power in 41 years. It won 99 seats to the Congress-led UDF's 41 seats, on the back of welfare policies, its management of the covid-19 pandemic, and the partial collapse of UDF strongholds in central Kerala.
This 2026 selection looks set to revert to the cyclical pattern. As of 10.45 am, the Congress-led UDF was leading in 94 of the 140 seats for which numbers were available. Its gains came entirely at the expense of the LDF.
The other thing to watch in Kerala was the performance of the BJP, a state where it had won only one assembly seat ever, in 2016. It is leading in 1 seat. While this won’t move the needle this time around, it could have implications for Kerala’s two-alliance politics going forward.
Puducherry: NDA in pole position
Like Assam, Puducherry has voted for a status quo, with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) firmly in pole position. As of 10.45 am, NDA was leading in 10 of the 17 seats for which results were available. Previously, the NDA in Puducherry comprised the AINRC, BJP, and LJK, and it has since added AIADMK to its fold. The 2021 contest was decisive in margin terms: nine of NDA's 16 wins were by more than 10 percentage points; only two were under 2%. Early trends point to a similar result in 2026, also.
The Union territory’s 30 assembly seats are split into four non-contiguous enclaves: Pondicherry mainland (21 seats, the political centre), Karaikal (5, also in Tamil Nadu), Mahe (1, an enclave inside Kerala), and Yanam (3, an enclave inside Andhra Pradesh). Mahe and Yanam routinely behave as Malayalam- and Telugu-speaking outliers, respectively, with their own 1-AC or 3-AC swing dynamics.
Vijay's TVK is contesting Puducherry with NMK as a junior partner—its first electoral test outside Tamil Nadu. However, in contrast to its sweeping impact in Tamil Nadu, TVK has not made an impact in Puducherry, and was not leading in a single seat as of 10.45 am.
But this is still early counting, in all states.
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