Tamil Nadu Assembly Elections 2026: Can Vijay make a difference?

 OF ALL THE STATES poised for elections, Tamil Nadu presents the strangest case. The prevailing opinion among psephologists is that this Assembly election defies analysis. On another plane, it might change history.

The Assembly polls in 2021 were the first from which both heavyweights—Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi—were absent. The consequent vacuum was almost tangible back then. But two things had won the day for DMK—a sizeable amount of sympathy for Karunanidhi, and the implosion of AIADMK in Jayalalithaa’s absence. Even then, the margin of victory for DMK in a substantial number of constituencies was rather thin.

Against this backdrop, the 2026 polls are truly the first being fought in a climate of leadership drought in both the DMK and the AIADMK camps.

Chief Minister MK Stalin never got a chance to grow under the banyan-tree leadership of his late father. After Jayalalithaa, AIADMK’s never-ending saga of factions and defections reached a critical stage when former Chief Minister O Panneerselvam defected to DMK on February 27, 2026.

Since its second year in power, DMK has faced an unending storm of criticism for corruption, collapse of law and order, and targeting of Hindu Dharma. More worryingly, in the  post-Covid years, several Central and state agencies have uncovered global narcotics networks freely operating in Tamil Nadu.

More than anybody, Stalin is fully aware of the extent of unpopularity that his government faces. He has predictably resorted to desperate tactics like Muslim appeasement and reckless promises. His hopes of retaining power hinge chiefly on the captive Dravidian and Muslim vote bank and the hotchpotch alliance of 24 tiny parties, most of which are caste-based. Congress, which was first ousted in 1967, is not even a factor in the state.

Karunanidhi had languished for more than a decade in the political wilderness when MG Ramachandran (MGR) was in power but re-emerged after the latter’s death. Stalin lacks the requisite skill, age, and stomach for that kind of fight. Besides, at Karunanidhi’s peak, BJP was not the colossus it is today. And so, Stalin, like the progeny of all patriarchs, is totally ill-equipped to carry hisfather’s legacy.

At another level, the nature, tenor and vehicles of ideological and political discourse have been transformed in ways that DMK is yet to fully fathom. In all fairness, Stalin belongs to the last of the generation of politicians shaped by and in the era of Congress dominance. They manage to survive thanks to decades of being in power and building an ecosystem that sustains them. The April elections will tell us whether and how long the survival lasts.

DMK also faces a new challenge in the form of film actor Joseph Vijay who made his political ambitions clear in the 2011 elections when he supported Jayalalithaa. Fifteen years later, with both Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi gone, he has forayed with undisguised aggression, committing shocking public blunders.

The Karur stampede in his September 2025 rally which killed 41 innocent people is the most grievous; what made it worse was his unapologetic behaviour in its wake. The most puzzling aspect of Vijay’s entry is the lack of any ideology or plank. No one knows what his party, TVK, really stands for. Neither does his party have a well-defined organisational structure or notable second-rung leaders. He has expectedly steered clear of criticising Dravidianism and EV Ramaswamy Naicker (Periyar).

The logical surmise is that Vijay belongs to that bevy of film actors who not only aspire to become politicians but also want the chief minister’s seat in their maiden attempt. Only two politicians achieved that feat—MGR and NT Rama Rao (NTR). They had succeeded for different but closely related reasons.

MGR was a rebel DMK who was expelled from the party for exposing its dirty secrets and eventually got his revenge. It was more a moral and less a political decision to form AIADMK. In terms of his popularity as a film star, MGR still stands unrivalled.

NTR plunged himself in politics with a solitary aim: to dislodge Congress from undivided Andhra Pradesh. The news of Anjaiah—a sitting chief minister—carrying Rajiv Gandhi’s footwear at the airport in full public view sealed NTR’s decision. He framed his rhetoric plainly: reclaiming the self-respect of the Telugu people from Congress imperialism. NTR’s popularity in Andhra exceeded that of MGR’s in Tamil Nadu—he was regarded as the very incarnation of Krishna.

Vijay clearly does not command that level of adulation; the Tamil Nadu of 2026 is not the Tamil Nadu of 1977. But if comparisons must be made, both MGR and NTR were knowledgeable and self-made leaders; they acquired their knowledge through a combination of native instinct, hard professional training, personal interaction with society, and life experience. More importantly, they were the only actors who became chief minister. Vijayakanth and Chiranjeevi, who enjoyed widespread popularity, failed in politics.

Unpredictable as politics is, Vijay might emerge as a dark horse; his voter base almost exclusively comprises the legions of diehard fans who hail from the lower strata in the general age bracket of 18-30. Additionally, some powerful sections of the Christian community have expressed their support, implying their shift away from DMK. Whether this combination alone will ease him into the chief minister’s chair remains to be seen. If it doesn’t, he will be remembered as the Tamil version of Chiranjeevi who merged his party (Praja Rajyam) with Congress in just three years.

BJP faces the toughest battle given its open opposition to the Dravidian ideology. Even worse is the decades’ long stigma of being a party of Brahmins (derogatorily called Paarpanars) and North Indians that plagues it. On the ideological front, it has made impressive dents in DMK’s Dravidian fortress, but transforming it into power is still an uphill battle.

The chief strategy employed by these parties is sabotage, poaching and division. One doesn’t know who is on whose side. But the outcome will tell us whether this Assembly election was indeed history-altering or a damp squib.