Chennai Here is the supreme irony of the polls in Tamil Nadu. For someone who is never short of self-confidence or even self-indulgence, chief minister Jayalalithaa, for once is not talking about herself at all. Instead, most of her election speeches are devoted to singing praises of her ally, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Her pitch is that only he can provide a stable government.

She does not touch on local issues like water an electricity. While Vajpayee may be touched by her faith in him, he will not be pleased with the net result. For, what many people urgently want is a solution to the water crisis—and that is exactly DMK’s pitch. ‘‘ The water crisis is haunting the people and the government has failed in all aspects,’’ says T K S Elangovan, DMK’s organisational secretary. But political analysts believe that local issues are important but at the end of the day it all boils down to sheer mathematics. And as far as that goes, the BJP might have just miscalculated in the state. The BJP, from the beginning, has been banking only on Jayalalithaa to bring in the seats. In the process it has lost any chances of alliances with other parties. The PMK and MDMK have always been sympathetic to the BJP. ‘‘The BJP and AIADMK didn’t realise that all the parties would get together in this manner,’’ said one analyst.

DMK leaders in the state are definitely swearing by the numbers. Going by past trends, the Progressive National Alliance, which consists of the DMK, Congress, PMK, MDMK, Indian Union Muslim League and the two Communist parties, seems to have a slight edge over the AIADMK and the BJP.

Politics in Tamil Nadu has always been bipolar with no traces of cross-voting, say analysts. The DMK has its own committed votebank, mainly among the urban middle class. And the AIADMK is popular among the rural poor, slum dwellers and women.

Past electoral trends show that the AIADMK and the DMK enjoy between 23 to 25 per cent of the votes in the state. In the last Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, it was the smaller parties that tilted the balance. In the 2001 Assembly election the AIADMK had aligned with the CPI, CPIM, PMK and TNC, while the DMK aligned only with the BJP and minor parties. The AIADMK won 195 out of 234 seats.

Meanwhile, PMK voters are predominantly caste-based with the Vaniyars voting for the party. According to analysts it has about 6 per cent of the votebank. The two Communist parties, which enjoy support among the agricultural labourers and organised labourers in industrial areas, and MDMK have 7 per cent of the vote share.

‘‘It’s a formidable alliance. There are two factors: one is the strength of the alliance and the cadre strength and there is strong anti-incumbency,’’ said Vaiko, who was incarcerated by Jayalalithaa for 19 months in a POTA case. ‘‘There is a lot of anger in the state.’’ The IUML has two per cent. The Congress in the state enjoys around 10 to 12 per cent, while the BJP enjoys a marginal presence in certain areas.

Analysts say in 1998, 1999 and 2001 the margin of victory has always between 12 lakh to 20 lakh votes, governed by which alliance the smaller parties have been a part of.

Jayalalithaa has also lost the support of the minorities in the state due to the alliance with the BJP. However, BJP state national secretary L. Ganeshan said, ‘‘Numerically because they have lots of parties they have to create a myth that they are strong. The alliance itself is a bundle of contradictions.’’

In the alliance, the DMK is contesting in 15 seats, the Congress in 10 seats, PMK in five including Pondicherry, MDMK in four, CPI in two, CPIM in two and IUML in the Vellore seat. The AIADMK, meanwhile, is contesting in 33 seats and the BJP in six.

Even in seat allocation, political watchers believe that there might have been miscalculations on the part of both the DMK and AIADMK. The BJP wanted the South Chennai seat as most of the voters in the area are Brahmins but Jaya has fielded her own candidate senior advocate Bader Sayeed, against T R Baalu. She has given North Chennai, which is dominated by fishermen, Muslims, Christians and Dalit community, to the BJP.

But even the DMK seems to have miscalculated. The DMK denied the Pondicherry seat to the Congress even though the union territory has voted consistently for the Congress. Congress cadres are now supporting the PMK.