Is Suresh Gopi going to snatch away Thrissur as trend shows?

Thrissur: After initially lagging behind his rival candidates, BJP’s Suresh Gopi is leading well ahead by more than 18,000 votes.

The fluctuating trends in the constituency have finally thrown up distinct lead for a candidate.

Despite BJP’s high-decibel campaign in the constituency, most of the exit polls predicted K Muraleedharan of the Congress to win the seat giving the distant off chance to LDF candidate Sunil Kumar.

The early trends in the morning showed the trends going in that direction.

Suresh Gopi has made a strong impact in Thrissur raising the BJP’s vote share in the last Lok Sabha polls.

When the saffron party first time debuted in Thrissur in 1989 its vote share was just 5.35 per cent and it continued to hover around 10 per cent until 2014.

The actor’s entry in the temple town made marked difference to the BJP, increasing its percentage of votes from 11.15% in 2014 to 28.19% of votes in the last polls.

Back then, Congress leader T N Prathapan bagged 39.83% of votes winning the poll leaving Suresh Gopi behind CPI’s 30.85%.

Gopi’s meteoric rise in vote share virtually shocked both fronts, and the constituency gained wide attention as he chose to contest against here.

Replacing Prathapan, the Congress brought in Muraleedharan from his sitting Vadakara constituency at the eleventh hour.