Independents finish on top
What happened
This time, no organized party topped the seat count — candidates without any party label did.
Independent candidates won 33 of the 140 seats, more than any single party.
That left it short of the 71-seat majority mark — a hung house, where no single party wins enough seats to govern alone.
Its closest rival, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), won 26 seats.
What changed
Two rival Congress factions saw their support collapse, with many of their seats going to unaffiliated candidates instead.
13 of the Indian National Congress (Urs)'s seats moved straight to IND candidates, the single biggest shift of the election.
Across the state, 77 of 140 seats changed hands from the previous election.
Notable numbers
A few numbers from that election stand out.
The closest race was at Palluruthy, Keralam, decided by a margin of just 16 votes — how far ahead the winner finished, in votes, over whoever came second.
Tanur, Keralam had the widest margin of the year, with the winner finishing 46.4% of the vote ahead of the runner-up.
About 85.3% of registered voters turned out to cast a ballot at Sherthalai, Keralam, the highest share of any seat that year.
Nilambur, Keralam drew the largest field of the election, with 11 candidates on the ballot.
The backdrop
This election came soon after Kerala's two rival political fronts first faced off in their present form.
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.