Alappuzha: AICC general secretary K C Venugopal is set to wrest the CPM’s lone sitting seat in 2019, Alappuzha, by a comfortable margin, according to the ManoramaNews-VMR exit polls. KC is now a Rajya Sabha member from Rajasthan, and his win means the Congress will lose an RS seat.

KC got 11.1 per cent votes more than A M Ariff in the exit poll. If elected, this will be KC’s third stint in Lok Sabha from the Alappuzha LS seat.

KC got 43.88 per cent votes while Arif got 32.78 per cent. BJP’s firebrand leader Shobha Surendran increased her party’s vote share by 4.85 per cent to get a total of 22.07 per cent. The LDF is the significant loser with an 8.13 per cent vote share dip.

In 2019, Ariff had scraped through braving the Rahul wave in the state by a margin of 10,474 votes against Shanimol Usman of the Congress. Ariff bagged 4,45,970 votes (40.91 per cent) while Shanimol came second with 4,35,496 votes, or 39.95 per cent. BJP candidate K S Radhakrishnan polled 1,87,729 votes or 17.22 per cent.