Counting starts for Tamil Nadu seats as Stalin seeks retention — Tn Election Results
tn election results begin at 8 am Monday, May 4, when the Election Commission of India starts counting votes for all 234 Tamil Nadu Assembly constituencies. Postal ballots will be taken up first, with electronic voting machine counting set to begin at 8.30 am.
The count will decide whether MK Stalin’s DMK-led alliance keeps power or whether the AIADMK-BJP camp takes control. A majority in the 234-member Assembly requires 118 seats, and the result will follow ballots cast across 75,064 polling stations.
Stalin And The 118-Seat Mark
Stalin leads the ruling DMK-Congress alliance, which is contesting 164 constituencies. Congress is contesting 28 seats, while the DMK-led bloc is trying to stay above the 118-seat threshold needed to form a government.
The AIADMK is contesting 167 seats, and the BJP is contesting 27. Pattali Makkal Katchi has been allotted 18 seats, and TTV Dhinakaran’s AMMK has been allotted 11 seats, making the count a test of how the larger alliances perform across the full field.
Vijay And The Exit Poll Range
Actor-turned-politician Vijay and his party TVK are also in the contest. Exit polls gave TVK a wide range, from 2–6 seats in People Pulse and Matrize to 1–6 seats in P-MARQ, while Axis My India projected 98–120 seats for Vijay’s TVK.
Those projections also split on the two main blocs. People Pulse projected 125–145 seats for the DMK-led alliance and 65–80 seats for the AIADMK-BJP combine, while Matrize projected 122–132 seats for DMK and allies and 80–100 seats for the AIADMK alliance.
Tamil Nadu Counting Centres
The Election Commission has set up 62 counting centres and deployed a three-tier security system at them. It has assigned 10,545 personnel for counting duty and 4,624 micro-observers to maintain transparency and integrity.
The first security layer is a 100-metre perimeter around each counting centre. State Armed Police will man the second layer at entry gates, while Central Armed Police Forces will secure the counting halls and EVM strong rooms.
April 23 Turnout
Tamil Nadu voted in a single phase on April 23 and recorded an 84.69 per cent turnout, the highest since Independence for the state. The electorate included over 5.73 crore voters, among them 2,93,04,905 women, 2,80,30,658 men and 7,728 third-gender voters.
That turnout exceeded the previous best of 78.29 per cent in 2011. By the end of Monday’s count, the question will not be how many ballots were cast but which alliance crosses 118 first.
