NEW DELHI: The legislative assembly election results in Kerala were declared on 2 May, and the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) created history by procuring 99 of the total 140 seats, beating anti-incumbency to return to power; the opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) had to settle for the remaining 41 seats while BJP was left empty-handed.

Prior to the election results, several Malayalam channels had broadcast their post-poll predictions, and Mathrubhumi News has emerged as the only Malayalam channel which managed to predict the mood of the people of Kerala almost perfectly. 

The 98-year-old media group predicted 104 to 120 seats for LDF and 20 to 36 seats for UDF. Interestingly, Mathrubhumi also predicted that BJP will get 0 to 2 seats in God’s own country. 

"Everything had to be right if we were to put out a prediction, right from choosing the agency, Axis My India, to agreeing on a statistically valid sample size and the methodology including the various groups' representation on the research,” said Mathrubhumi managing director MV Shreyams Kumar. “While we had other options, what we preferred was face-to-face interactions with the voters. When the final numbers came out, we had no hesitation in making a bold proclamation of our finding as we knew we got the voters sentiments clearly etched on our research sheets."

The media group’s had made a bulls-eye election prediction during the 2016 Kerala assembly polls too.