Vijay’s TVK stuns Tamil Nadu, claims 108 seats, upends old order

Vijay converted a film-star following into the strongest electoral debut Tamil Nadu has seen in decades, sending his Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam to 108 seats in the 234-member assembly and forcing the state’s old political duopoly to confront a new rival. The result made TVK the single largest party and gave C Joseph Vijay Chandrasekhar a mandate to formally claim the right to form the government, even though the party still fell short of the 118 seats needed for a simple majority.

The scale of the breakthrough went beyond a big win. TVK’s performance ended a 59-year pattern in which power in Tamil Nadu was shared exclusively by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. For a state politics shaped for generations by the Dravidian movement and by larger-than-life personalities, Vijay’s surge was not simply a celebrity crossover. It was the clearest sign yet that a new political force could break the two-party structure that had defined elections since 1967.

The numbers show how quickly Vijay translated popularity into votes. TVK did especially well in Chennai and other urban constituencies, and it also made gains in working-class and youth-heavy seats, a pattern that suggests fan culture alone was not enough. Vijay launched the party only in February 2024, then sharpened his challenge in November 2025 by declaring the election would be a battle between DMK and TVK. That framing appears to have worked, especially among voters who were looking beyond the established parties.

The backdrop mattered as much as the campaign. Tamil Nadu’s old bipolar order had already been weakened by the deaths of J Jayalalithaa and M Karunanidhi, which removed two dominant personalities who had anchored rival political blocs. Their absence left a vacuum in a state long accustomed to charisma-driven leadership, and Vijay moved into that space with unusual speed. His rise also fits Tamil Nadu’s long tradition of film star-politicians, but on a scale that is now reshaping the opposition map itself.

TVK’s 108-seat haul did not instantly end coalition arithmetic, but it changed the balance of power. The DMK finished far behind with 59 seats and the AIADMK with 47, underscoring how sharply voters shifted away from the old order. For Tamil Nadu, the election was more than a star-led upset: it marked the first breakthrough of this size outside the DMK-AIADMK axis in nearly six decades, and it opened a new chapter in the state’s political economy of loyalty, identity and leadership.