Thiruvananthapuram: The Manorama News-VMR exit poll has predicted a victory for UDF candidate and incumbent MP Shashi Tharoor with 37.86 per cent vote share in Thiruvananthapuram.

It is predicted that NDA candidate Rajeev Chandrasekhar will come in second place with a 35.25 per cent vote share. This means that the Congress candidate's victory margin is a thin 2.61 per cent. LDF's Pannyan Raveendran is predicted to be in third position with 25.58 per cent vote share.

While Tharoor will see a 3.28 per cent drop in votes polled from what he got in 2019, the NDA is expected to see an increase of 3.99 per cent votes. The increase in LDF votes is a minimal 0.02 per cent.

In the 2019 elections, Tharoor defeated senior BJP leader Kummanam Rajasekharan by a majority of 99,989 votes. Tharoor got 4,16,131 votes and Kummanam received 3,16,142 votes. C Divakaran of CPI got only 2,58,556 votes. Tharoor's vote share was 41.19 per cent, while it was 31.3 per cent for Kumman and 25.6 per cent for Divakaran.