The yawning gap between voting and the declaration of results in the recent Kerala Assembly election has created a period of high tension and gripping suspense for candidates and their political parties. For the media, political analysts, and pollsters, this interregnum is a field day, with everyone offering their own interpretations of the polling percentages. While the United Democratic Front (UDF) and its media backers have begun celebrating the high turnout as a clear sign of a political tsunami in their favour, the Left Democratic Front (LDF) appears more cautious, claiming only a modest mandate. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), meanwhile, is pitching for a hung Assembly. Yet, despite the confidence with which these predictions are made, most leaders and “experts” are driven more by subjective political beliefs and hopes than by any sound logic or scientific analysis. After all, polling percentage has never been a reliable indicator of electoral outcomes in Kerala.

A perusal of the state’s electoral history since 1957 clearly demonstrates that both the UDF and the LDF—or their predecessors—have won and lost elections irrespective of voter turnout. High or low participation has never consistently signified either anti-incumbency or continuity; it has worked both ways.

Consider the evidence. The highest-ever polling percentage in Kerala—85.72% in the 1960 Assembly election—was unmistakably an anti-incumbency vote against the dismissed first E.M.S. Namboodiripad government, despite its widely acknowledged record of governance. Although the Communist Party of India (CPI), then undivided, secured more votes than in 1957, the united front of anti-Communist forces commanded a clear majority.

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The pattern shifted dramatically in 1977. The election, which recorded the........

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