Chennai, May 23: The Tamil Nadu Assembly elections have reaffirmed that the three national parties - the Congress, BJP and the CPM - still need to depend on the Dravidian big two to survive in the state.

The Congress can take comfort in its raised tally, up from five in 2011 to eight. But overall, it has pulled the DMK down by handing easy wins to the AIADMK in the 33 other constituencies it contested.

"Only in Kanyakumari district did the Congress help the DMK by consolidating the Christian votes in its favour, allowing the alliance to sweep all the six seats in the district," a DMK politician said.

"But even that was in response to the strong BJP candidates, four of whom finished second."

Elsewhere, the Congress did well only in a handful of constituencies.

"In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, our vote share was a mere 4.3 per cent with zero seats. But this time, with the DMK performing so strongly, our vote share climbed to 6.4 per cent although we had contested just 41 seats," a former Congress MP said.

"Winning only 8 of 41 meant our strike rate was less than 20 per cent. This proves that we have not grown in the past two years and that our tally was boosted by DMK votes."

A Congress candidate who lost in Chennai said the anti-Congress sentiment was strong in urban areas. "The middle class seemed to prefer Jayalalithaa and (Narendra) Modi, in that order," he said.

The choice between Modi and Jayalalithaa cost the BJP too, just as it had in 2014.

"At least in 2014, the Modi factor had propelled the NDA to an 18.6 per cent vote share and two Lok Sabha seats. But this time, even the pro-BJP voter preferred the AIADMK in most of the seats, realising it had a better chance than the BJP of defeating the DMK front candidate," BJP spokesperson S.R. Sekhar said.

"Our candidates finished second in just four seats and a respectable third in another four."

The AIADMK's "winnability" caused even state BJP president T. Soundararajan and national secretary H. Raja to lose their deposits in the two Chennai seats of Virugambakkam and T. Nagar, which had been badly hit by the December floods.

BJP supporters there simply transferred their votes to the AIADMK, realising that their party had little chance of defeating the DMK. The AIADMK won both seats.

Similarly in Mylapore, the Brahmins voted for the AIADMK rather than the BJP to defeat the Congress.

The BJP polled 12.28 lakh votes compared with 4.1 lakh in 2011, when it had contested just about 100 of the 234 seats. The party had, however, claimed earlier that some 50 lakh voters had joined it using its missed-call membership option.

"The truth is that the only connect with those voters was the missed call. After that, no one bothered to meet them directly or enrol them formally or get them to bring in more members. The missed-call members remained missing for the BJP," a party official joked.

As for the communists, they will have no representatives in the Assembly for the first time. Even the Nota (none of the above) option pulled more voters --- 5.61 lakh --- than the CPM's 3.07 lakh or the CPI's 3.4 lakh.

Earlier, the communist twins would tie up with either the DMK or the AIADMK, winning about half-a-dozen seats each. In 2011, the CPM had won 10 and the CPI 9 when they sailed with the AIADMK. This time, their third front experiment proved a disaster.

"Our decision not to go with either of the Dravidian parties has cost us," a senior CPI politician said.

"We have lost badly even from our traditional seats where we had substantial farmer or industrial-labourer votes."