Do postal votes change who wins in Tamil Nadu?

• Source: ECI's candidate-wise results for all 234 seats, with EVM and postal votes shown separately (General election, polling 23 April 2026, counted 4 May 2026).
• ‘Changed the winner’ means the candidate with the most voting-machine (EVM) votes alone is not the declared winner. That is the case in 0 of 234 seats.
• Top picture: 5,21,907 postal votes of 4,93,24,125 votes counted statewide (1.06%), drawn as 1 dot in 100. A dot is an approximation; these numbers are exact.
• ECI's results table gives every candidate postal votes and EVM votes as separate numbers, and the declared total is their sum. On counting day, 4 May 2026, counting of postal ballots was to begin at 8 am and EVM counting at 8.30 am (CEO Tamil Nadu, as reported by ETV Bharat, 27 April 2026).
• ‘The party with the most postal votes’ is the party of the candidate with the most postal votes in the seat, NOTA left out. The winner is as declared (EVM plus postal). In the dot picture, blue means the same party won, gold means another party won, orange is the one tie.
• If two parties tie for the most postal votes, neither has the most. In Chengam (AC 62) AIADMK and DMK each got 849 postal votes and AIADMK won, so it is counted as a tie, not as a seat where another party won. The three groups add up: 117 another party won + 116 same party won + 1 tied = 234.
• Postal totals are valid postal ballots as ECI lists them; rejected postal ballots are not in ECI's table.
• ECI's table does not say who the postal voters in a seat are, so nothing here says how any group voted.
• Form 20 booth sheets and electors are not used here, so the 16 seats where a booth sheet differs from ECI by a few votes, and Chengalpattu's published sheet, which has four stations with no votes printed and seven blank rows, do not touch these figures.
• Download the table (CSV)
• Tamil Nadu election results 2026, all 234 seats
• How votes are counted in Tamil Nadu

No. In the 2026 Tamil Nadu election the candidate with the most voting-machine (EVM) votes also won in all 234 seats, so postal votes changed the winner in 0 seats. Postal votes were about 1 in every 100 votes counted.

The ECI results list 5,21,907 postal votes, 1.06% of the 4,93,24,125 votes counted statewide (EVM plus postal).

DMK got the most postal votes in 136 of 234 seats, AIADMK in 38 and TVK in 25; one seat, Chengam, was tied. TVK won 58 of the 136 seats where DMK got the most postal votes.

A vote cast by post instead of on an EVM at a polling station, counted separately from EVM votes. For the April 2026 election ECI notified that electors above 85, persons with disabilities flagged in the rolls, essential-service and election-duty voters, and service voters could vote by postal ballot (ECI release, 19 March 2026). Ballots had to reach the Returning Officer by 8 am on counting day, 4 May 2026.