Karnataka Assembly polls: How Telugu vote may swing the 'waveless' election

About 15% of Karnataka's population is estimated to be Telugu speaking and Telugu is the third most spoken language in Karnataka after Kannada and Urdu

With less than 10 days left before the Assembly elections in Karnataka, politicians are busy slugging it out and political pundits are coming up with varied predictions on an everyday basis. Almost all opinion polls have predicted the possibility of Karnataka giving a fractured mandate and throwing up a hung assembly. Pollsters agree that Karnataka is an extremely tough state to predict because of the different voting patterns of different regions, the caste equations, local issues etc. In the end, a swing of 1 or 2% of the votes can make all the difference.

There are several constituencies where