The outcome means that the party led by former chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami is set to slip to third place in a state long dominated by the two Dravidian majors since the late 1960s, as the Congress is expected to extend support to Vijay. Formed only in February 2024, TVK defied expectations in its debut election and is on course to become the single-largest party but is likely to fall short of a majority by a few seats.Tamil Nadu has a 234-member assembly, with 118 needed for a majority.Contesting from his stronghold of Edappadi in Salem district, Palaniswami is set to win by a huge margin. After all 18 rounds of counting, the AIADMK general secretary had secured 1,48,933 votes, leading his nearest challenger, independent K Premkumar, by 98,110 votes, the Election Commission’s website showed.This will be his fourth successive term from a constituency he first won in the 2011 assembly polls.However, along with the AIADMK, its NDA allies—including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—failed to pull their weight. The BJP, which contested 26 seats, managed to win only one and was not leading in any others. Similarly, the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) also failed to open its account.This also leaves the alliance’s future uncertain. After exiting the NDA ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the AIADMK returned to it in April 2025 after both it and the BJP failed to win a single seat in the state in the general elections, where all 39 seats were swept by the DMK and its allies.The AIADMK has struggled with factionalism following the demise of J Jayalalithaa in December 2016, months after she led the party to re-election in the state. Senior leader and former chief minister O Panneerselvam, a long-time Jayalalithaa loyalist, joined the DMK ahead of the recent assembly polls.Overall, the results leave the AIADMK facing a tough road ahead, with the party needing to rebuild and regain its footing amid the rise of TVK as a new dominant force in the state.