After a hard-fought election campaign in Thailand, many Thais may be scratching their eyes and thinking, “What just happened? Most of the polls that came out before the election said that the progressive People’s Party would win. Some people said it would win more than 200 seats in parliament, which would be a big improvement from its already remarkable 2023 record when it got 151 MPs. Not many polls show the party of Prime Minister Anutin Chanrvirakul ahead.
The mixed vote system had anything to do with it. People in Thailand voted for two things: a candidate in their district and the party they like best. The People’s Party did much better in the party list at the national level, getting almost 10 million votes, while Bhumjaithai only got just under six million. However, this was still a big drop from the more than 14 million votes that the People’s Party won in 2023, when it was called Move Forward.
Local races decide who gets as many as 80% of the seats. The candidate who gets the most votes in each constituency wins the seat on a first-past-the-post basis. The People’s Party is weaker here since it is new and mostly based in cities, therefore it doesn’t have many rural networks.
Bhumjaithai, on the other hand, is very good at using its large resources to win over local power brokers, who have a lot of sway over voters in their areas.It was evident that Anutin had won a huge win and that the young reformists had lost a lot of ground after the votes were tabulated.
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