Election results for Kerala: CPI(M) receives the fewest seats since 2001

With the intention of guiding the LDF to a third term in power, the CPI(M) entered the Kerala electoral contest in 2026. Voters were asked, “Who else if not LDF?” in its confident campaign slogan.

However, the party was only able to get 26 seats when the ballots were tallied on May 4. The Congress-led UDF won 102 seats, while the Left front got 35. The CPI(M) only kept just more than one-third of the 62 seats it had won in 2021, which is a huge blow.

This time, it lost seats that were fought by current ministers as well. News outlets had reported that a number of ministers were having a difficult battle when the counting started on May 4 morning. By the afternoon, over 14 ministers of the LDF cabinet were set to lose, and news station anchors remarked that it would be much simpler to keep track of the few ministers who succeeded.

Outgoing minister Mohammad Riyaz, who won from Beypore, said, “I thank the voters in Beypore for voting for CPI(M) amidst the general [anti-LDF] trend.”

Congress Vice President Abdul Rasheed maintained the vote lead till the sixth round of counting, and even Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan barely made it. Even if the departing chief minister was able to win from Dharmadam, the party’s crushing defeat is, in many respects, also his defeat. Pinarayi was positioned as the face of the CPI(M) and the LDF in general well in advance of the polls, with big flex boards featuring simply his image along Kerala’s streets.

CPI(M) had 45 MLAs when it last held opposition seats in the Kerala Assembly in 2011. The party had won 23 seats ten years earlier, in 2001.The fact that the CPI(M) has been thoroughly defeated in its traditional strongholds in 2026 is remarkable. V Kunhikrishnan, the expelled leader of the CPI(M), won Payyannur by a margin of more than 7,000 votes. With support from the UDF, he had run as an independent.