The Left front's first win
What happened
Kerala's government changed hands, in the first election between the state's two new rival fronts.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) won 35 of the 140 seats.
That left it short of the 71-seat majority mark on its own.
The Indian National Congress (Urs) was the next-largest individual party, with 21 seats.
What changed
This still counted as a landslide: Indian National Congress's own support collapsed sharply, even though the incoming side also fell short of a majority alone.
17 of the INC's seats moved straight to the INC(U) instead, the single biggest shift of the election.
Across the state, 75 of 140 seats changed hands from the previous election.
Notable numbers
A few numbers from that election stand out.
The closest race was at Ollur, Keralam, decided by a margin of just 25 votes — how far ahead the winner finished, in votes, over whoever came second.
Kottarakara, Keralam had the widest margin of the year, with the winner finishing 56.2% of the vote ahead of the runner-up.
About 85.3% of registered voters turned out to cast a ballot at Aroor, Keralam, the highest share of any seat that year.
Eravipuram, Keralam drew the largest field of the election, with 10 candidates on the ballot.
The backdrop
This was the election that gave Kerala's two rival fronts their present shape.
Kerala's fragmented coalitions consolidated into two rival pre-poll alliances in the late 1970s: the Congress-led United Democratic Front, formed in 1979 by K. Karunakaran, and the Left Democratic Front, founded the same year by E. M. S. Namboodiripad and P. K. Vasudevan Nair. The LDF first contested as a bloc in 1980, winning power under E. K. Nayanar.