Popular support for LDF intact: Vijayan

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CPM state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan said while UDF had secured 84,55,193 votes, the LDF garnered 77,67,888 votes.

Thiruvananthapuram: Asserting that the popular support for the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) is intact, CPI(M) state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan has said the ruling alliance was adrift of the Opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) by only 6.87 lakh votes in the just-concluded local body elections. He said while the UDF had secured 84,55,193 votes, the LDF had garnered 77,67,888 votes.

In percentage terms too, the difference between the two alliances was only marginal, at 3.69 per cent. While the UDF had won 46.01 per cent votes, the LDF got 42.32 per cent votes. Considering the fact that the LDF had contested the polls without several of the allies who were with it during the 2005 local body and 2009 Lok Sabha elections, this should go to show that the LDF had not suffered much erosion in its support base.

Vote percentage

In 2005, the LDF had secured 49.22 per cent votes. Since the alliance had got only 42.32 per cent votes this time, this would mean that it had suffered a loss of 6.9 per cent votes. The allies and outside-backers of 2005 had secured 9.18 per cent votes, DIC (Karunakaran) 4.67 per cent, Janata Dal (Secular) 2.30 per cent, Kerala Congress (Joseph) 1.79 per cent and Indian National League 0.35 per cent.

The CPI(M) leader said that if it were an automatic subtraction of their share, the percentage this time would have been only 40.04 per cent. The actual percentage, on the contrary, showed a 2.2 per cent increase in the vote share of the LDF. In the 2000 local body elections, the LDF had got 42.64 per cent votes, which would mean that the erosion this time was only of 0.32 per cent.

Further, the LDF's total share of votes had also gone up as compared to the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. In the Lok Sabha elections, the LDF had only 38.40 per cent vote share, against 40.23 per cent in 2005 and 41.47 per cent in 2000.

The actual increase from 2009 in terms of votes came to 10.64 lakh from 67,17,438 to 77,81,671 which could only be termed a very good performance as compared to the Lok Sabha elections, he said.