A knife-edge Assembly
What happened
No single party came close to a majority on its own, and the result left the two main fronts close to evenly matched.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) came out as the largest single party, with 45 of the 140 seats.
Its LDF front — an alliance, a group of parties that team up to fight an election together, and share power afterward if they win enough seats between them — won 67 seats in all, short of the 71-seat majority mark.
What changed
The party that had led the outgoing government lost ground here, while its closest rival gained.
Its own seat count fell from 61 to 45.
Its vote share slipped -2.3 pp from the previous election, even as the Indian National Congress gained +2.3 pp.
Notable numbers
A few numbers from this election stand out.
The tightest finish was at Piravom, Keralam, decided by just 157 votes — the margin, how far ahead the winner finished, over whoever came second.
The widest margin of the election was at Vengara, Keralam, where the winner finished 38.4% of the vote ahead of the runner-up.
Kuttiadi, Keralam saw the highest turnout — the share of registered voters who actually cast a ballot — at 87.7%.
Aranmula, Keralam had the largest electorate of any seat that year, with 2,07,229 registered voters.
The backdrop
This contest continued to play out inside Keralam's long-running rivalry between its two main fronts.