In February, I had listed a couple of potential coalition configurations. We have ended up with a “purple coalition” comprising Bhumjaithai and Pheu Thai, with Kla Tham excluded from the mix. But this is a more purely purple government than many analysts may have originally imagined; only Bhumjaithai and Pheu Thai are represented in this cabinet, with all other coalition partners excluded.

Here’s a look at the makeup of Anutin’s second government.

By the numbers

• Of the 7 deputy PMs appointed, 5 were from Bhumjaithai, 1 from Pheu Thai, and 1 outsider.

• Bhumjaithai received 13 full ministerial roles and while Pheu Thai received 5.

• 7 Bhumjaithai members were appointed deputy ministers, while 3 Pheu Thai members were appointed.

• In total, of the 35 individuals who were appointed to this cabinet, 25 are from Bhumjaithai, 8 are from Pheu Thai, and 2 do not have partisan affiliations.

In parliament, Bhumjaithai’s MPs make up around 65 percent of the coalition, while Pheu Thai makes up around 25 percent — so Pheu Thai has received roughly a fair allocation, while Bhumjaithai is slightly overrepresented. There is room for this because the remaining 10 percent of MPs are from small parties which did not win enough seats to warrant a place in the cabinet.1

A reflection of Bhumjaithai’s internal dynamics

This cabinet reflects the internal pressures of Bhumjaithai’s party management.

Anutin kept his promise to reappoint his three popular technocrats (Supajee Suthumpun, Sihasak Phuangketkeow, and Ekniti Nitithanpraphas) to their current roles, and top it up with deputy PM positions. This is unsurprising given how central they have been to the Bhumjaithai election campaign, but must still have been difficult because of the large number of factions within the party that were demanding positions.

Bhumjaithai clearly tried to balance rewarding longtime party loyalists and the thanking the large numbers of defecting factions who had been so critical to the party’s election victory. Prominent switchers like Varawut Silpa-archa (formerly head of the Chart Thai Pattana party) and Akanat Promphan (previously secretary-general of the United Thai Nation Party) both received cabinet roles. Some newcomers received their first-ever positions, such as Sanphet Bunyamanee, son of former senior Democrat Niphon Bunyamanee.

Inevitably, some defectors were disappointed — we saw Anucha Sasomsap hint to the press that his Nakhon Pathom faction contained four MPs and that it would be up to Anutin to consider whether he should be upgraded to a ministerial role. (In the end, he did not receive a cabinet position). Some of the original batch of defectors who had helped make the first Anutin government possible also did not receive appointments, including ex-industry minister Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana and ex-deputy interior minister Sakda Vicheansil (who actually lost his own constituency seat in a shock result).

We also see the increasing prominence of what has been dubbed the “Lookthep Gang”2 . This is a faction of heirs to prominent local clans who are seen as close to Bhumjaithai’s secretary-general, Chaichanok Chidchob (son of Newin Chidchob). The origins of this grouping can be tracked back to 2024, when Bhumjaithai decided to refresh the party image by bringing in younger politicians. Several received appointments in this cabinet, but some of the older generation in Bhumjaithai are reportedly dissatisfied with this grouping’s rise in influence. In addition to the large number of cabinet seats offered to the technocrats, this is another potential flashpoint for Bhumjaithai when reshuffles are placed on the horizon.

Other noteworthy points

Pheu Thai’s division of cabinet roles was interesting. It is no surprise that Prof. Yodchanan Wongsawat, the party’s main candidate in the past election, became deputy prime minister. It is, I believe, the first time in history that this role will be held concurrently with the higher education portfolio, a reflection of Yodchanan’s academic background. Suriya Juangroongrueangkit, who will now be holding a cabinet role under his sixth prime minister (stretching back to Chuan Leekpai in the 1990s!), must be breaking some sort of record. Notably absent is Somsak Thepsuthin, who rivals Suriya in ministerial experience but seems to have been dropped in a bid to let some newer faces into cabinet.

Gen. Natthaphon Narkphanit, defense minister in the first Anutin cabinet, is out. The new defense minister is Lt Gen Adul Boonthamcharoen, who was previously deputy defense minister. I’ve classified him as a nonpartisan appointment because he is not technically a member of any party. The former commander of the second army region, he has military experience in the lower northeast, including along the Cambodian border.

It is noteworthy that Dr. Bowornsak Uwanno, who was deputy prime minister responsible for legal affairs, has departed from the cabinet. We heard conflicting reports about why this was the case, but the most likely explanation appears to be due to his independent streak. We do know that he is an original thinker with his own ideas, seen most clearly during his time as constitution drafting committee where his vision reportedly diverged from the military government’s. Anutin instead decided to appoint Pakorn Nilprapunt, secretary-general of the Council of State. Pakorn comes with legal experience, and indeed he was recommended for his previous Council of State role by the most prominent legal mind of recent Thai governments, Wissanu Kruea-ngarm.

The new cabinet will not be able to begin conducting its duties until Anutin has made his policy declaration to parliament. In the meantime, the interim government will continue in office.

Over the course of his political career, Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has been dealt some bad hands. In 2019, Anutin became health minister. Less than a year later, he was confronted with the worst pandemic in a century. Now, fresh off a massive electoral victory, before he even officially begins his second term as prime minister, he must oversee Thailand’s response to the worst energy crisis in recent memory.

After the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, the Thai government sought to limit the impact of rising energy costs on consumers by significantly subsidizing fuel prices through the Oil Fuel Fund. Within three weeks, it had burned through 20 billion baht, with daily expenditure now reaching around 2 billion baht a day. The government began signaling that the dam on oil prices was about to break earlier in the week, when both Anutin and Finance Minister Ekniti Nitithanpraphas said that oil prices will soon have to reflect the market reality. “Resisting market forces by freezing prices is ineffective. We must tell the truth to the people. Everyone must adapt to the volatility of global markets.” The biggest single-day increase so far came on March 26th, when fuel prices went up by six baht a liter across the board.

The initial subsidies may have been a satisfactory band-aid if the situation in the Middle East had reached a quick resolution. As the crisis dragged on, however, the impact the subsidies had on the market began to backfire. As the economist Nattavudh Powdthavee wrote, in addition to being fiscally unsustainable, the price caps distorted the market in significant ways, leading to hoarding and lack of energy saving. Even as the government stated that Thailand had sufficient fuel reserves, the past few weeks have witnessed frequent shortages at gas stations, forcing the government to require frequent checks of fuel levels.

The energy crisis is, of course, not Anutin’s doing, and any government’s ability to resist the increase in gas prices is limited. Compared to other Southeast Asian countries, Thailand’s fuel prices remain relatively low. Unfortunately for the government, voters don’t operate on a comparative basis. And as we have seen from how incumbents suffered around the world in the wake of inflationary pressure caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, voters tend not to discern whether or not their government is truly to blame for their hardship. As the New York Times quoted one Thai fisherman saying, “It’s a crisis abroad. But we are the ones who get screwed.”

The optics problem may have been exacerbated due to personnel choices. The activist Srisuwan Janya recently petitioned for Anutin to remove Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn from his position on the task force responding to the energy crisis. Srisuwan argued that because Phiphat’s family members continue to be involved in the energy industry, his appointment violates the constitution. For his part, as the Bangkok Post wrote, Phiphat denies that there is any conflict of interest, “saying he left all management positions in his family's fuel retail business more than two decades ago…He said his appointment reflected his industry experience.”

The People’s Party has demanded that the government raise prices in phases (rather than the 6-baht hike we saw). Deputy leader Veerayooth Kanchoochat also called for differentiated levels of support for different segments of the population. The Democrat Party proposed cutting the diesel excise tax from 6.90 baht to 6 baht per liter and impose a windfall tax on oil refineries, with the proceeds to go to supporting the Oil Fuel Fund. The government has proved receptive to some of these proposals. On March 26th, after a special cabinet meeting, the government announced that it would be looking at reducing the fuel excise tax and increasing payments to state welfare card holders by 100 baht for one month, in order to support low income earners.

There was, however, discontent among opposition parties when no cabinet minister responded to MPs who debated responses to the energy crisis on March 25th in parliament, with Democrat leader Abhisit Vejjajiva reminding the government that the interim cabinet is still constitutionally mandated to be held accountable by parliament. (Anutin was present during the debate but did not speak). The closest we came to a government response was when Bhumjaithai MP Akanat Promphan called on the new energy minister to have courage and to listen more from the people than from government data. The ministry, he said, must not greng jai (fear inconveniencing) anyone. The speech is notable because Akanat, according to various reports, is actually currently tipped to be the next energy minister!

If Akanat does receive this appointment, it will be worth watching how he approaches the energy crisis. When he was industry minister under the Pheu Thai government, Akanat was known for his aggressive approach to cracking down on illegal factories (to the point where he later claimed that gray businesses had put a 300-million baht bounty on his removal). Will he implement a similar take-no-prisoners approach to the energy industry? That remains to be seen.

Even as the world moves on to watching the geopolitical situation, I do want to take time to fully analyze the implications of the 2026 general election. So here is the second post in my series of election retrospectives, after my analysis of the results in Bangkok.

Last month, Joel Selway on Thai Data Points discussed the question of whether Bhumjaithai’s victory had been driven by nationalism. I encourage you to read the full piece, but the gist of his argument is that while nationalism likely played a role in motivating voters already predisposed towards Bhumjaithai, coordination in local races was the more important determinant of victory.

One thing that’s worth wondering about, however, is whether the Cambodian conflict played into voters’ calculations differently depending on where they were located. In what I will call the “regionalized nationalism” hypothesis, voters in areas that were directly affected by the conflict, or close enough to have gotten a scare from evacuation orders, would theoretically be more receptive to political pitches centered around national security.

One way to examine whether this hypothesis is accurate would be to see whether more nationalist parties performed better in provinces close to Cambodia. Two of the most stridently nationalist parties in this election were Bhumjaithai and the Economic Party. Below are maps of Thailand colored by party vote share, courtesy of Napon Jatusripitak’s election dashboard. (One note of caution: these maps are based on incomplete data at 94 percent reporting, but for our purposes here this shouldn’t significantly change the overall picture). Evacuations occurred in Buriram, Chanthaburi, Sa Kaeo, Si Sa Ket, Surin, Trat and Ubon Ratchathani.

The nationalist credentials of these two parties were very clear during the campaign. The Bhumjaithai government presided over the second round of the conflict between December 8-27 in late 2025. During the election campaign, the party pledged to build a border fence and to scrap MOU 44.

The Economic Party is, in some ways, the more interesting case study. It is a new party1 and lacks strong local networks. It was instead relying essentially solely on the nationalist wave. The party endorsed a border fence and scrapping MOU 44 and took even stronger stances on Cambodia than Bhumjaithai. Its leader, General Rangsi Kittiyanasap, made a name for himself with his straight-talking TV appearances where he proposed hardline measures on Cambodia. At one point, Rangsi said that “if Cambodia shoots at us, we must fire back with one hundred times the intensity” and appeared to suggest that Thailand can bring Hun Sen over to face justice (à la Maduro). The party also used the slogan “Thailand First” during the campaign. Thus, it’s reasonable to infer that people voting for the Economic Party did so mainly because of its policy program, not because of individual local candidates.

Bhumjaithai’s performance

Firstly, it’s worth noting that the lower northeast (which sits closest to Cambodia) voted differently on the party-list in 2026 than in 2023. Move Forward and Pheu Thai were the two parties that topped the party list vote in every constituency in this region in 2023. In 2026, Bhumjaithai had the most party-list votes in the lion’s share of constituencies. But Bhumjaithai also bested the other two parties in the Central region, where they also developed a high degree of local strength. It’s thus impossible to say for sure that the lower northeast performance was a regionalized result of nationalism.

To get a more granular picture, we’ll zoom into the border regions closest to Cambodia. Bhumjaithai saw its best performance on the party list ballot in one border province: Buriram. (See first map: the darkest shades of blue are concentrated in Buriram). Throughout the province, it won over 50 percent of the vote in every constituency, indeed in some areas winning close to 65 percent of the vote. But this is where Bhumjaithai has historically been strongest (Buriram is essentially the party’s capital city), and so its stratospheric performance here is unsurprising. Interestingly, the party failed to replicate this level of support outside of Buriram. Cross over to the border constituencies in Surin, Chanthaburi, and Sri Saket, and Bhumjaithai’s vote share decreases to closer to 30-40 percent of the vote. In Sa Kaeo, another province bordering Buriram, the party’s vote share declines to around 10 to 20 percent. In the Ubon Ratchathani constituencies directly bordering Cambodia, Bhumjaithai won as little as 6-8 percent of the vote.

This is still much higher than in 2023, of course, and given that nationally Bhumjaithai won 18 percent of the party-list vote, it can be said that in some border provinces Bhumjaithai did over-perform. Such results are perhaps attributable to nationalism. In Si Saket’s District 5, which sits on the border, Pheu Thai’s vote share collapsed from around 45 percent in 2023 to just 25 percent in 2026. That is a rather precipitous fall. Was this because voters were blaming Pheu Thai for mismanaging the border issues, and voters transferring their allegiance to Bhumjaithai? We would need survey data to draw a firm conclusion, but it would be a reasonable guess that at least some voters were behaving according to this logic.

We do have one point of caution to suggest that Cambodia was only one of many drivers of the Bhumjaithai vote in the border areas, however: the vote share varied considerably depending on which party possessed local strength. In some constituencies where Bhumjaithai faced dominant competitors, it underperformed. In Sa Kaeo’s district 2, for example, Bhumjaithai won just around 10 percent of the vote, while Palang Pracharath (which had a miserable election night otherwise) won around 27 percent. This is the district of PPRP leader Trinuch Thienthong, and this was the party’s strongest constituency nationwide. Here, local dynamics seem to have been key.

The Economic Party’s performance

What is more interesting is the Economic Party’s performance. Nationally, the party won around 3 percent of the party-list vote share (roughly a little over a million votes). But it was in the border areas that the Economic Party saw its strongest results. In the map, you can see that the darkest shades of yellow is clustered around the Cambodian border! Here were some of the party’s best constituencies:

• In Surin’s eighth district, the party won around 10 percent of the party-list vote; it had a similar performance in Sa Kaeo’s third district where they won a little over 9 percent. Both of these constituencies directly border Cambodia.

• In Sa Kaeo’s border constituencies (including Trinuch’s) it won 7 to 9 percent of the vote.

• In Chanthaburi’s third district and Si Saket’s fourth district, it won 8 percent of the vote.

It’s worth noting that we do not see similar performances anywhere else in the country. If the nationalist wave had swept through all of Thailand, you would expect to see the Economic Party to do respectably in Bangkok, the province most attuned to the national sentiment. But there, the Economic Party usually won between 1-3 percent of the party-list vote (in line with its national performance). The nationalist effect thus appears to be highly regionalized.

So what conclusions can we draw? There are too many confounding factors to say with complete certainty that Bhumjaithai performed well in the lower northeast because of the Cambodia factor. However, the strength of its performance on the party-list ballot, where voters are directly choosing a party instead of a local candidate, makes it plausible that Bhumjaithai may have indeed peeled off some nationalist voters from other parties. At least some Pheu Thai and People’s Party voters probably drifted towards Bhumjaithai because of the nationalism factor. Additionally, as Joel Selway wrote, nationalism likely played a role in turning out conservative voters who already were attuned to Bhumjaithai’s offerings in this election. In addition, the over-performance of the Economic Party in border areas indicates that the Cambodian conflict did play a role in driving the calculations of at least one major segment of the population in these provinces.

Yet if I were a party leader thinking of using nationalism as the main factor to drive support for my party, these results would give me pause. There were many facilitating causes underpinning Bhumjaithai’s victory, and nationalism was only one of them. The party that was riding solely on the nationalist wave was the Economic Party. The fact that their most outstanding performances show up clearest in constituencies that sit directly on the border and fade the further away you go indicate that even this regionalized version of nationalism may have had limited effects on voter behavior in the lower northeast. Indeed, even in some constituencies very close to the border, the Economic Party did not significantly over-perform.

The best conclusion we can draw based on the limited data we have is regionalized nationalism played at least some role in driving how voters behaved in 2026. That is not as clean a narrative as the one that the media offered in their reporting of the election results. Unfortunately, politics is rarely that clear-cut.

No surprises today: as expected, Anutin Charnvirakul was re-elected as prime minister in the House of Representatives.

Given that the result was a foregone conclusion, this vote is useful mainly as an exercise in evaluating the strength of the government coalition and the opposition. The coalition has 292 MPs1, while the opposition has 207 MPs. Anutin received 293 votes, while the People’s Party leader Natthaphong Rueangpanyawut received 116 votes. 86 MPs abstained.

What explains the slight discrepancies? Six MPs from the Thai Ruam Palang Party, which is not in the coalition, decided to back Anutin. Of the two MPs in the Thai Sang Thai Party, which is in the coalition, one decided to abstain. There had been rumors that there were a number of PP MPs who were considering becoming “cobras”2 and supporting Anutin. In the end, one PP MP voted for Anutin, while the rest voted for Natthaphong. Anutin, Natthaphong, the speaker and the deputy speakers all abstained.

MPs had the opportunity to voice their thoughts on the two candidates in the lead-up to the vote. Pheu Thai leader Julapun Amornvivat’s speech in support of Anutin felt strangely lukewarm. He refused to discuss the candidates’ qualities, saying that he is not in a position to judge who is “good or bad.” He instead made an appeal based on parliamentary arithmetic, saying that Bhumjaithai had won significantly more MPs than the second and third largest parties. The PP MP Rangsiman Rome launched a mini-no confidence debate on Anutin, which was heavily protested by coalition MPs.

Fragmented opposition

While the PP was largely united behind Natthaphong, the rest of the opposition clearly remains fragmented, something that had previously been indicated during the vote for speaker. Like in that vote, both Kla Tham and the Democrat Party abstained instead of voting for either the Bhumjaithai or PP candidate.

Kla Tham had previously played coy about what it would do regarding the PM vote. Captain Thammanat Promphao had affirmed his friendship with Anutin, saying that he would “never kill his boss or sell out his friends” but refused to say if he would vote for Anutin for prime minister, saying that he must separate the personal and the political. The party also indicated earlier in the week that it was considering nominating Thammanat to compete for the post. In the end, however, the party decided to abstain. In his speech to parliament, Kla Tham MP Atthakorn Sirilatthayakorn said, “Today [Anutin] has forgotten his friend named Captain Thammanat. I don’t mind, but I ask for one thing. Today he has almost two hundred votes. Don’t forget the problems of the people.”

The Democrat Party announced one day before the vote that it had scrutinized the profiles of both candidates and decided that abstaining was “necessary and important.” (This marks the fourth consecutive time that the Democrats have decided to abstain in a PM vote!) Abhisit Vejjajiva argued that both Anutin and Natthaphong were facing pending legal cases (collusion in the Senate selection process for the former and supporting amendment of lese-majeste for the latter) and that it must be clear a prime minister has no issues with their ethical conduct. He did note that an abstention was not a signal that the Democrats were waiting to enter government: “I have been in the opposition for almost the longest of anyone in parliament…[I will] truly, not just scrutinizing to generate content.” (The latter sounds like a swipe towards the PP).

It is worth noting that both parties’ MPs were completely united in abstaining, showing that there are yet no “cobras” from these two parties who are seeking to support the government.

Thai Pakdee’s sole MP, Warong Dechgitvigrom, became an internet sensation after he spoke (admittedly off-topic) proposed ending the provision of free food for MPs and reducing the number of MP assistants during the speaker’s vote. He abstained in this vote, saying Anutin needed to show he would be an anti-corruption leader and the stop the practice of free food in parliament. Seri Ruam Thai leader Sereepisuth Temeeyaves, on the other hand, voted for Natthaphong.

Anutin will now move to officially assemble his new cabinet. The latest reports suggest that the cabinet lineup is “99.5 percent” settled. He will want to move quickly to finalize his government, as the powers his interim cabinet possesses is limited, restricting its ability to deal with the increasingly serious energy shock. It will be a formidable first challenge for a second term.

At the new parliament’s first session on March 15, Bhumjaithai’s Sophon Saram was elected by MPs as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Mallika Jirapunvanit from Bhumjaithai was elected as first deputy speaker, while Lertsak Pattanachaikul from Pheu Thai was elected as second deputy speaker.

There were no surprises from the voting tally. Sophon received 289 votes, while the People’s Party nominee Parit Wacharasindhu received 123 votes. The former aligns approximately with the number of MPs in the government coalition, while the PP’s tally matched with its own MPs. There should thus be no surprises in the vote for prime minister.

We did get a preview of how the opposition will function, however. Both the Democrats and Kla Tham announced prior to the vote that they would abstain. The total number of abstentions was 80, which matches with the number of Democrats and Kla Tham MPs added with the interim speaker. This is a clear indication that the two parties are unwilling to follow the PP’s lead and will be seeking to maintain their independence. It also shows that for now there are no MPs from these two parties seeking to signal their willingness to defect and join the coalition, instead obeying their party leadership.1

A former primary school teacher from Buriram province, Sophon is known to be close to Newin Chidchob. Sophon said that as speaker, he wants more laws to originate from the legislature rather than the executive branch. We’ll have to wait and see how he plans to accomplish this.

“Buriram’s Golden Age”

Sophon’s election reflects the overall dynamics of this parliament. He will be the second Bhumjaithai figure to be Speaker — Newin’s father Chai Chidchob served in the post between 2008 to 2011 — but his speakership will take place under radically different circumstances from Chai’s. In 2008, Bhumjaithai had been conceded the post as an important coalition ally. Sophon, on the other hand, is ascending to the top post in Thailand’s legislative branch as a sign of how dominant the party’s position is.

A recent article in The Momentum noted the rising prominence of Buriram province. It is the home base of Bhumjaithai; the party held a three-day retreat for its MPs in Buriram just last week. Sophon, the constituency MP for Buriram’s District 5, will preside over the House of Representatives.2 In the Senate, Buriram senator Mongkol Surasajja wielded enough support to be elected Senate President in 2024. He previously served as Buriram’s provincial governor. (Overall, 14 Buriram candidates were selected as senators in 2024, the most of any province, surpassing far more populous provinces like Bangkok). Thai Post perhaps put it clearly when they called this era the “a true golden age for Buriram.”

In a way, the outsized eminence of the dark blue capital demonstrates the level of hegemony the dark blue camp currently exercises over Thai politics. They enjoy not only a parliamentary majority, but also a friendly Senate that has wide control over appointments to key posts in the judiciary and the independent agencies. To put it simply, we have not seen such a concentration of power in any faction in Thai politics during a democratic period since at least the early 2000s.

This is the first of several retrospective deep dives into the results of the 2026 general election, where I plan to look into interesting aspects of how certain regions behaved and how some parties performed. We’ll start off with an analysis of the results the nation’s capital: Bangkok.

You may ask why it is worth dissecting the results in Bangkok at all, when the People’s Party (PP) swept every single constituency. I think it deserves some attention because 1) it is an anomalous result that contradicts how the PP faltered in the constituencies across the rest of the country, and 2) Bangkok will be holding local elections later this year, and we may glean some useful predictions from these results.

Bangkok as swing province

Bangkok is a notoriously fickle-minded province, with the results often swinging wildly from election to election. This is because baan yai find it difficult to operate in highly urbanized environments, and so Bangkok candidates are often highly dependent on the party’s national popularity. Even well-regarded incumbents are easily tossed aside once their party falls out of favor.

Take a look at how Bangkok has voted in the past general elections held this century:

• 2001: Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai Rak Thai Party swept 29 out of 37 Bangkok constituencies, with the Democrats winning the rest

• 2005: Thai Rak Thai won 32 out of 37 Bangkok constituencies

• 2007: The Democrat Party won 27 out of 36 Bangkok constituencies, with Pheu Thai winning the rest

• 2011: The Democrat Party won 23 out of 36 Bangkok constituencies, with Pheu Thai winning the rest

• 2019: Palang Pracharath won 12 out of 30 Bangkok constituencies, with Future Forward and Pheu Thai splitting the rest

• 2023: Move Forward won all but one of Bangkok’s 33 constituencies

• 2026: The People’s Party won all of Bangkok’s 33 constituencies

There are three observations worth highlighting. Firstly, Bangkok tends to vote in one direction (with exceptions in 2011 and 2019). Secondly, in the past 25 years, no political party has ever been able to sustain its popularity in Bangkok over more than two election cycles. A party can win the vast majority of the seats in one election and then be almost wiped out in the next. Third, winning all the seats in Bangkok is rare. You have to go all the way back to 1976, when the Democrats swept Bangkok, to find a precedent.

The PP still has no peer in Bangkok

The PP won an average of around 42,000 votes per constituency, followed by Bhumjaithai at around 14,000, Pheu Thai at around 12,000 and the Democrats at around 10,000 votes. (This excludes District 15, for which the Electoral Commission hasn’t uploaded final results at the time of writing). You could add up the tallies for the next three parties together and in some constituencies, that still wouldn’t be enough to beat the PP. Take, for example, District 8 in Bangkok. PT’s Surachart Thienthong had won a byelection as late as 2022 with a margin of almost ten thousand votes. In this election, you could add the BJT and Democrat tallies to PT’s and they still would be slightly behind the PP.

That will be enormously disappointing for the other political parties. PT had initially looked well-positioned to win back some seats in Bangkok’s outer ring, which the party had retained before 2023 even after the height of Thaksin’s popularity had receded in the capital. Yet, one PT candidate managed to sum up the party’s problems succinctly when he posted immediately after the election: “I’m out of energy. I can’t beat the krasae.” Even PT’s long-standing local candidates with a long track record of constituency service were unable to overcome the strength of the PP party brand in Bangkok.

The Democrats, former champions who have endured a Bangkok drought since 2011, will also be disappointed that they did not come closer to winning a seat, despite Abhisit Vejjajiva’s return to lead the party. Indeed, they were more often fourth than second. Before the election, some news agencies were reporting that the party was hopeful about ten constituencies in Bangkok, but even in these constituencies the results were nowhere near victory. Bhumjaithai is at its highest level of popularity in Bangkok ever — it won only around two percent of the Bangkok vote share in 2023 — but like the Democrats, this was not nearly enough for them to be competitive.

We saw some outstanding performances from certain parties in a number of constituencies, such as the son of United Thai Nation Party secretary general Chatchawal Khongudom coming third in District 7 (he has long been well-known in the area) but this goes to show that even longstanding local networks could not overcome the PP wave.

What this means

The PP’s Bangkok haul accounts for over a quarter of all the seats that the party has won in this general election. It is a double-edged sword: PP is now even more vulnerable to shifts in the national sentiment than previously. In dyeing Bangkok completely orange, it has also become the orange capital. The historical odds are already against it; as we noted earlier, in the past 25 years no party has swept Bangkok more than twice in a row. If the PP is unable to sustain its national popularity until the next general election, major losses in its Bangkok seats would be devastating to the party. “Luckily” for the PP, however, this will also be only the second time in the past 25 years where a party has swept Bangkok did not enter government. (The first time was 2023, when Move Forward failed to form a government). Its level of popularity in Bangkok may not prove difficult to sustain while it remains in opposition.

Of course, it’s far too early to consider what might happen in the next general election. Coming up far more quickly are the local elections. Governor Chatchart Sittipunt’s term will end later this year, and so Bangkok is due to hold an election both for Bangkok governor and for members of the Bangkok Metropolitan Council (BMC). Chatchart has yet to announce whether he will run for re-election.

Logic would typically dictate that the PP should be in a strong position to win both the governorship and sweep the BMC, given how stratospheric their general election performance was. But it’s worth remembering how deeply formidable Chatchart’s electoral performance was in 2022. He had won almost 53 percent of the vote; no other candidate received more than 10 percent of the vote. After four years, Chatchart is probably not as popular as he was in 2022, but he’d need to fall down a long way before anyone can come close to catching up. The field in 2026 is likely to be as fractured as in 2022, with the PP and the Democrats certain to field candidates, and a number of independents are also likely to jump in. (We don’t know if Bhumjaithai will contest this race). That would make a Chatchart victory even more probable, if he chooses to run.

Other parties may have more of a chance in the BMC elections; Pheu Thai had won the most seats in 2022, followed by Move Forward and the Democrats. Long-standing councillors have proved more impervious to national shifts than MPs, but we’ll see if the PP’s popularity bucks yet another trend.

One year into Anutin Charnvirakul’s stint as Minister of Public Health, the COVID pandemic erupted and he was suddenly in charge of overseeing Thailand’s response to the biggest global health crisis in a century. Now, only a few weeks after he won a general election that will return him for a second term as prime minister, Anutin will now be in the unenviable position of overseeing Thailand’s response to a geopolitical crisis that have sent energy prices skyrocketing.

“The Iran war puts Asia in an energy panic,” blares The Economist’s headlines. “In 2025 Asia absorbed 87% of the crude and 86% of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) transiting via the Strait of Hormuz. Now the strait is blocked and Asia risks running out of fuel, fast.” As oil prices surge past $100 a barrel for the first time since 2022, Thailand is unfortunately one of those Asian economies that may find itself under significant pressure. 60 percent of Thailand’s crude oil and 25 percent of LNG are imported from the Middle East via the now-blockaded Strait of Hormuz. Multiple research agencies have noted that Thailand is one of Asia’s most vulnerable countries in the event of an energy crisis.

In his initial response to this unfolding energy shock, Prime Minister Anutin suspended fuel exports (except for petroleum to Laos and Myanmar)1. The government also acted quickly to assure consumers that energy prices will remain stable. On March 9th, Energy Minister Auttapol Rerkpiboon said that the Oil Fuel Fund was currently spending about 700 million baht a day to subsidize energy prices, and that this level of support can be maintained for at least another fifteen days.2 According to Auttapol, Thailand has enough supply of oil for 65 days “if imports were completely disrupted,” while “additional supplies secured from sources outside the Middle East would provide roughly another 30 days of coverage, bringing the total reserve estimate to about 95 days.” To help reach this goal, Anutin has also signed a directive requiring oil traders to increase their legal reserves from 1% to 3% of their annual trade volume.

Yesterday, a high-level meeting resulted in the announcement of the following measures (posted here by the FC Anutin Facebook page):

• Boosting biofuel usage by shifting biodiesel blend from B5 to B7 to reduce reliance on imported oil (Thailand is the world’s third largest producer of palm oil)

• Restructuring prices to make Gasohol E20 more attractive than E10 (Thailand is a major producer of ethanol and indeed has a surplus due to overcapacity)

• Ensuring that industrial users do not run out of fuel

• Seeking alternative sources of energy, such as increasing gas production in the Gulf of Thailand and increasing electricity imports from Laos,

• Freezing the price of cooking gas for two more months

• Announcing an energy-saving campaign

Nation Thailand reported that “a source at the Energy Ministry told Krungthep Turakij that the ministry has developed a proactive energy contingency plan.” This includes the issuing of an emergency decree permitting the Ministry of Finance to guarantee loans for the Oil Fuel Fund so that prices can continue to be subsidized (similar to what was done in 2022 during the initial stages of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine). The government is also seeking to secure more oil supplies from the United States, Africa, and Malaysia.

Where is the energy saving campaign?

The energy saving campaign that the government is looking to launch includes measures such as:

• Setting air conditioning temperatures to 26°C.

• Regularly check car engine conditions to ensure maximum efficiency and reduce fuel consumption.

• Allowing employees to work from home

Thailand is not alone in launching these energy-saving measures. The Guardian’s Rebecca Ratcliffe reports that in the Philippines, “All national government agencies, state universities and colleges, and local government branches have been told to reduce fuel consumption by at least 10% in response to the crisis in the Middle East.”

Several political parties have for days been pushing for a national campaign. On March 4, the People’s Party called on the government to immediately set an example by implementing energy-saving measures within the bureaucracy. Democrat deputy leader Korn Chatikavanij yesterday called on the government to signal strongly to the private sector that people should increase working from home.

The government is perhaps trying to minimize panic — a run on gas stations would not be helpful. And of course, there is a possibility that the Middle Eastern conflict could end sooner rather than later, limiting the scale of the global energy shock (although prices are still likely to increase even if the war ended today).3 But should it not, Thais will thank Anutin for taking more decisive action now rather than acting too indecisively.

Good morning from The Coffee Parliament. Over the next few weeks, I plan to release some in-depth analyses of the 2026 general election results. The first piece will be on the election results in Bangkok, and it should be out in a couple of days.

Today’s update is a short overview to catch you up to speed on some important developments over the past week.

The political calendar

We now have a rough political calendar for the next two months.

• His Majesty the King will preside over the opening of the new session of parliament on March 14.

• The selection of the new Speaker of the House of Representatives will be conducted shortly after, as the first order of business of the new parliament. Current rumors indicate that Sophon Saram, currently deputy prime minister and a close associate of Newin Chidchob, will be taking this post.

• Some reports are suggesting that March 19 may be the date for the election of the new prime minister. Anutin Charnvirakul will almost certainly be selected for his second term.

• The new cabinet will then be appointed and the government will make their policy declaration to parliament. (The new government cannot begin their duties until the policy declaration has been made). All of this will likely conclude in April.

Coalition makeup

All the major news agencies have reported that Bhumjaithai has “closed the deal” on the makeup of the next government. It will be a “purple coalition” composed of Bhumjaithai as the coalition leader, Pheu Thai as the largest junior partner, and a constellation of small parties, such as Palang Pracharath and Prachachart, as stabilizing allies. Neither Kla Tham or the Democrat Party have been invited to join this government. The new government will have 293 seats in parliament.

These reports say that Bhumjaithai is likely to take over 14 ministries and 26 cabinet positions, including Bhumjaithai’s three star technocrats (Ekniti Nitithanpraphas, Supajee Suthumpun, Sihasak Phuangketkeow). Bowornsak Uwanno is likely to be re-appointed as deputy prime minister for legal affairs. As noted previously, Bhumjaithai will also take the speakership and one deputy speakership. Bhumjaithai will most likely be taking control of all ministries related to the economy and security. A defense minister has not yet been decided. Pheu Thai will receive nine cabinet posts, likely to be education, higher education and research, social development and human security, labour, and agriculture. Palang Pracharath is likely to receive one cabinet post.

We will see how close these reports are to the final makeup when it is announced in the next few weeks, but there is no reason to believe that these are widely off the mark, as they track with all the rumors surfacing since the general election. The reports do note that both Bhumjaithai and Pheu Thai have proposed more candidates than seats available to Anutin, so it appears that no final selections have been made.

One more thing: the global energy situation

An unexpected task facing Anutin as he forms his second government is the global energy situation. According to Energy Minister Auttapol Rerkpiboon, Thailand has sufficient oil reserves for 65 days, but supplemental measures will bring that number up to 95 days. The Oil Fuel Fund continues to cap energy prices. The prime minister has now appointed a special task force to watch the situation in the Middle East and manage the fallout. We’ll keep an eye out on developments in this area.

Dear readers of The Coffee Parliament,

We have some down time between the end of the election season and before the political calendar ramps up again with the opening of parliament. Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul appears to be in no hurry to finalize the makeup of his coalition government, which I think all Thai politics observers can be grateful for because we all need a breather.

I launched The Coffee Parliament on January 30th, 2025. Its first anniversary was right in the climax of election season, and so the date completely slipped my mind. It wasn’t until later in February that I realized this Substack is now over a year old! There wasn’t really a break in how busy Thai politics was until the end of the month, however, so here I am to reflect on this milestone a month late. But in a way, perhaps it’s only appropriate after the recent election campaign to reflect on one year plus of this Substack. (All regular readers surely understand the reference).

Firstly, a big thank you to all readers of The Coffee Parliament. When I launched this newsletter, I had no idea if it would gain a meaningful level of readership. Thailand is a country of 70 million people, but Thai political analysis written in English remains a bit of a niche industry. One friend asked who the audience is for an English newsletter on Thai politics! Yet between January 30, 2025 and January 30, 2026, The Coffee Parliament had almost 60,000 views and over 70,000 email views.

This was certainly in large part driven by the frenetic pace of Thai politics in 2025, something I did not anticipate at all when I started the Substack. (Indeed, I thought we were going to be looking at the stable third year of a Pheu Thai government — which just goes to show that we political analysts really don’t have crystal balls). Over the past year, I’ve covered local elections, a general election, two rounds of border conflicts, the fall of one prime minister and the emergence of another, multiple cabinet changes, and a lot of miscellaneous news on top of that. To put it mildly: what a year.1

Some of the articles I enjoyed writing the most from this first year were:

• Party in the Provinces (a look at how party brands have taken on greater prominence in local politics)

• Looking Beyond ‘Why Nations Fail’ (written after Thais obsessed over the book at the start of the year)

• On the “Domestic Rivalry Theory” and the “International Family Feud Theory” (a piece on the origins of the first round of Thai-Cambodian conflict, which became the most popular piece from the past year)

• Bhumjaithai’s New Coalition Emerges (the political scientist in me was surprised to see Thailand’s first confidence and supply agreement)

• The Death of an Old Party (I primarily study political party institutionalization, so you’ll understand that this was of particular interest)

• Bhumjaithai’s Big House Edge (where I covered the most important driver of what became Bhumjaithai’s election victory)

Recently, I’ve found myself thinking more about the role of a political newsletter as AI models get better. I’m sure that all political analysts are keenly aware that acquiring and summarizing the news is one thing that LLMs are easily capable of. The question that must lurk perilously in the deepest recesses of all our minds, then, is whether writers of political analysis will become obsolete. I think, however, that there is still room for a newsletter that brings you ideas propagated by a human, and with prose that is human-written — in a way that goes beyond just an artistic appreciation for the handmade. At the very least, I hope that over the past year this newsletter has been able to take you on contextualized deep dives of Thai politics that go significantly beyond what AI summaries can provide.

With some luck, this year will be a reversion to the mean in terms of the level of political activity in Thailand, which while potentially less exciting does give us space to analyze issues more deeply. The Coffee Parliament remains completely free to read for now, and if you’ve enjoyed my writing over the past year, I do hope that you’ll recommend this newsletter to the Thai politics enthusiasts in your circle.

Thank you once again, and please let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions for this newsletter as it enters its second year.

Best wishes,

Ken

March 2nd, 2026

In the past few pieces, I’ve alluded to the ongoing debate regarding the barcodes that were printed on the ballots used in the 2026 general election. I want to take some time in today’s newsletter to take a more in depth look at this controversy and what it could mean for the political landscape.

The barcodes that were printed on the ballots in this election are new and have not been used in previous elections. It has been found that scanning these barcodes reveals a unique and ordered serial number. Critics have seized on this innovation to argue that it could be theoretically possible that someone in possession of the ballot paper, its stub, and a voter list at that specific voting station would thus be able to trace the voter who used that specific ballot, which could compromise thus compromise the secrecy of each voter’s choices. This, they argue, would contravene Section 85 of the 2017 Constitution, which states: “Members of the House of Representatives who are elected on a constituency basis shall be elected by direct suffrage and secret ballot.”

The Electoral Commission argues that these barcodes were used in order to prevent fabricating ballots, counting to ensure that the number of ballots in each roll is correct, and tracking the origin of lost ballots. The three components necessary to trace a voter’s specific choice (the ballot paper, the stub, and the voter list) are needed together, and thus without possession of all of these materials, the principle of the secret ballot is upheld.

This controversy has brought in Thailand’s most famous legal heavyweights. Dr. Wissanu Kruea-ngarm, former deputy prime minister for legal affairs, was the first to weigh in. Wissanu said:

If you ask for my personal opinion, I think that this is wrong. It is not a secret, because if someone wants to, they are able to go back and trace [the voter’s choice]. Is there a possibility of finding out? If so, then it is not a secret. Section 85 of the Constitution states that [voting] must remain a secret. That means secrecy from this world entirely.

The principle of the secret ballot, Wissanu argued, means that the identity of the person who cast that ballot must remain a secret for eternity. Although he emphasized this was merely his personal opinion and that he could be wrong, Wissanu noted that if the Constitutional Court does rule that Section 85 was violated, he sees few options other holding a new election nationwide.

On the other side of this debate is Dr. Bowornsak Uwanno, the current deputy prime minister in charge of legal affairs and another prominent scholar of constitutional law. (See his posts here and here). Bowornsak noted that “some legal gurus have ‘leaped over Lanka’1 and argued that a ‘secret ‘means it must be secret from the entire world.” However, Bowornsak argued that such a secret does not exist in practicality, and the barcodes do not contravene the principle of the secret ballot. He made a couple of key points:

1. It is the role of the EC to ensure the election is conducted cleanly. In the past, he noted, ballot stuffing has been noted. Barcodes ensure that this cannot happen.

2. Three of the countries which began the conduct of the secret ballot, namely the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, also use similar mechanisms. In no country has an election ever been annulled because of the use of barcodes.

3. A “secret” does not mean that responsible officials cannot access that information. In an election, the responsible officials are the Electoral Commission.

4. A Constitutional Court ruling from 2018 argued, in a case on having an official assist the disabled and the elderly with marking their ballots: “As long as there is no public dissemination of that disabled or elderly person’s voting choice to the public, then it can be considered a vote conducted directly and secretly.”

The uncertainty over whether the constitution was violated means there are plenty willing to test the waters. The Ombudsman has revealed that 28 cases have already been filed, which may be forwarded to the Constitutional Court for an opinion. The EC has been operating carefully, using ballots with no barcodes in election reruns conducted on Sunday. This led People’s Party leader Natthaphong Rueangpanyawut to ask whether or not this is an admission that the ballots used on February 8th were problematic.

Ultimately, it is likely that this case will be heard in front of the Constitutional Court. Will it lead to an annulled election? I don’t have a firm prediction to make here, although I have a hunch that the Constitutional Court’s precedent from 2018 (cited by Dr. Bowornsak) would indeed provide those who take up the EC’s side of the debate with firm footing to stand on in a legal battle. Meanwhile, the Bhumjaithai government will proceed with politics as usual as it continues to form a government — more on that soon.

Some miscellaneous updates:

• I wrote an article for Asialink Insights on why Bhumjaithai won.

• I also want to give a shoutout to Napon Jatusripitak’s election data hub, which is now by far the best way for you to browse through various ways to visualize the election results. Check it out here!

We are now nearing two weeks after the general election, and there is still an interesting and unexpected lack of clarity about the makeup of the next Bhumjaithai-led coalition government.

A few more small parties have officially joined the Bhumjaithai coalition, after the addition of Pheu Thai last week, and the government can now count on 296 MPs. Logically speaking Bhumjaithai should probably just stop there; a majority of close to 50 is sufficient to ensure that the government is stable and ensures that the coalition is not so big that allocation of cabinet posts becomes too difficult. The only concern would be that Pheu Thai, with its 74 MPs, could become a veto player inside the government, as it could alone topple the coalition if it chooses to leave.

That brings us to the question of whether Kla Tham will join the government. I wrote about this topic last week, and we still have no clarity on that front. Take a look at these mixed signals.

Pai Lik, the Kla Tham secretary-general, said that the party has absolutely no conditions for joining the government. This could theoretically mean that it would be willing to concede the Ministry of Agriculture, which earlier media reports suggested was a ministry that Bhumjaithai was keen to take back. Pai also said that Kla Tham PM candidate Thammanat Promphao is not requiring that he himself take a cabinet post.

Most revealing has been comments from Thammanat himself. At a press conference today, Thammanat hit back at rumors that constitutional ethics requirements has made Bhumjaithai reluctant to include Kla Tham in its cabinet lineup, saying: “Whoever appointed me as a minister, if you think that I am in the wrong, then you will also be in the wrong.” When asked about the small parties that have been supporting Bhumjaithai, he retorted: “Have you ever heard of illusions?” And to top it all off, Thammanat noted: “Kla Tham is not scared of being squeezed by anybody. But if you squeeze me, beware of being hit back. In my life I’ve never picked a fight with anyone first, but if they do with me they will have nightmares.”

Thammanat also earlier suggested that the media focus more on the issue of ballot barcodes than on coalition formation. The use of barcodes on election ballots this year have become an increasingly controversial topic of discussion. The gist is this: some argue that these barcodes can be used to track who each person voted for, which would violate the constitutional principle of a secret ballot and thus potentially nullify the election. (The legal expert Wissanu Kruea-ngarm is among those who think that this could be an issue). That Thammanat would bring this up right now, when there is a lot of uncertainty about whether Kla Tham will be in government, is an interesting move.

Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has provided little comment on this matter. He was seen speaking to Kla Tham leader Narumon Pinyosinwat, but reports suggested that Anutin and Thammanat have not yet met since the election. The past week’s cabinet meeting was reported to have been a tense affair.

Overall, it is clear that not all is well with the Bhumjaithai and Kla Tham relationship, and earlier pre-election speculation that the two have formed an unbreakable alliance was premature. If Bhumjaithai truly were set on having Kla Tham in the coalition, it would be a simple matter to invite them to a press conference the way they did with Pheu Thai last week. The fact that this hasn’t happened yet, allowing all these rumors to fester and increasing the amount of bad blood between the two parties, suggests that there really is a world in which the two parties are headed for divorce. Even if they remain together, the tense relationship must certainly have some impact on their ability to cooperate in government.

There were also reports that Bhumjaithai will be administering the ministries that oversee the economy and security, while Pheu Thai will mostly be administering ministries related to society, although Pheu Thai secretary-general Prasert Jantararuangtong said that this has not yet been finalized. It will likely be weeks before we have a better idea of the final shape of the next government.

It’s not easy to keep up with the pace of Thai politics recently! Here is a short post with the latest update on coalition negotiations.

Less than 24 hours ago, I sent out a newsletter on Bhumjaithai inviting Pheu Thai to join its coalition government. This, I thought, was the beginning of what I’m calling an “RGB coalition",” where Bhumjaithai forms a coalition that includes both Pheu Thai, Kla Tham and other minor parties, going for a highly stable 338+ seat majority.

Almost immediately after sending out that post, however, I started to have second thoughts about whether or not we are indeed headed down the RGB path. I added this edit (which email subscribers unfortunately probably did not see): “Having thought about it further, the inclusion of the minor parties could be a major sign that Bhumjaithai may indeed be thinking about a coalition without Kla Tham. Why invite the minor parties if Pheu Thai and Kla Tham alone would already get Bhumjaithai way above the majority line?”

The math is telling. Cabinet quotas will already be at a premium in a government that includes Bhumjaithai (193 seats), Pheu Thai (74 seats), and Kla Tham (58 seats). Adding in a party such as Palang Pracharath (5 seats) which wouldn’t, in an ordinary quota calculation, receive a cabinet seat but probably wouldn’t be satisfied without one wouldn’t make sense, in that case.

Later in the evening, the media began reporting on another interesting clue. Thai Rath, for example, reported that Bhumjaithai sources were indicating the current coalition will include Pheu Thai, Kla Tham, and 35 MPs from smaller parties (including Prachachart, United Thai Nation, and Thai Pakdee). However, the reports repeated rumors that there are tensions between the two parties over how some dark blue strongholds were targeted by the green camp. Bhumjaithai reportedly also wants the Ministry of Agriculture to be supervised by Supajee Suthampun, who will be appointed as deputy prime minister, and thus this ministry would have to be moved into the Bhumjaithai quota. If Kla Tham does not let go of this ministry, the report says, they may no longer be invited to join the government.

If the reports are true, this could be a very difficult ultimatum for Kla Tham to swallow. Since 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture has been run by Thammanat, Narumon Pinyosinwat, Atthakorn Sirilatthayakorn, then Thammanat again in succession — all currently in Kla Tham. The party campaigned heavily on agricultural policies, including a flagship proposal to convert land documents into agricultural title deeds. Without control of this ministry, Kla Tham will find it hard to follow through on its pledge to “do more than they talk” on core policy pledges.

Thus the probability that we end up with a “green exclusion pact” — a broad coalition of Bhumjaithai, Pheu Thai, and the Democrats1 — or a “purple coalition” composed mainly of just Bhumjaithai and Pheu Thai does seem to be increasing. Democrat leader Abhisit Vejjajiva pointed out yesterday in an interview that a Bhumjaithai-Pheu Thai coalition topped up with a sufficient number of seats would have a majority similar in size to a Bhumjaithai-Pheu Thai coalition that includes the Democrats.

We should have a firmer picture of Kla Tham’s status in the coalition in the next week. There is unlikely to be any movement today; when reporters asked whether Kla Tham will receive an invite today, Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said merely that today is Valentine’s Day. Even if Kla Tham does eventually join, however, the RGB coalition would clearly be off to a bumpy start.

Pheu Thai’s representative, Yodchanan Wongsawat, met with Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul today at Bhumjaithai’s headquarters, which was followed by a press conference where both leaders confirmed that Pheu Thai would support Bhumjaithai in forming a government.

The two parties have been in a state of competition since last year, with Thaksin Shinawatra’s demand to return the Ministry of Interior from Bhumjaithai during the last Pheu Thai government along with Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s voice call leak sparking Bhumjaithai’s exit from that coalition. Anutin said, however, that “whatever misunderstandings we had in the past is normal and should be erased,” pledging that the two parties should now “collaborate together without boundaries, working in the government together.”

We still don’t have a final seat count from this election, but the preliminary numbers put Bhumjaithai at 193 seats and Pheu Thai at 74 seats. Yesterday, Bhumjaithai also invited Palang Pracharath, Economic Party, New Party, and New Democracy Party (worth a combined ten seats) to support Anutin for prime minister. Today, three one-seat parties also announced their support for Anutin. This means that overall, the Bhumjaithai-led coalition now has 280 seats. Technically, this would be enough to form a government, as a majority line is only 250 seats. However, a senior Bhumjaithai figure earlier stated that they would be aiming for a stable government with at least 300 seats, so they will still need to invite at least one more coalition partner.

It looks likely that the next party to get an invitation will be Thammanat Promphao’s Kla Tham Party, as it is the next biggest party and Anutin has said that he will invite partners in descending order based on seat count. What we would get would thus be an “RGB Coalition” that is essentially a return to the pre-Paetongtarn voice call status quo, except with a switch in coalition leader.

Yet there are some interesting signs that there may be more friction in negotiations between the two parties than one might have initially imagined. For one, Anutin has stated that he wants a “national flag-colored” coalition. We are already two thirds of the way there (dark blue and red), but what is the white party?

Thammanat stated recently that he holds sway over 80 MPs, which is quite a few more than the 58 that Kla Tham was projected to have win. This must thus include MPs from small parties. Former Democrat MP Thepthai Senapong speculated that Bhumjaithai’s decision to invite new parties to join the coalition may have been intended as a signal that it is able to coordinate with these parties without Thammanat’s help.

Edit: Having thought about it further, the inclusion of the minor parties could be a major sign that Bhumjaithai may indeed be thinking about a coalition without Kla Tham. Why invite the minor parties if Pheu Thai and Kla Tham alone would already get Bhumjaithai way above the majority line?

One obstacle with including Kla Tham in the coalition would be that the coalition would contain around 338 MPs. If you excluded the small parties, that would be a coalition of 325 MPs. Given that the constitution mandates that there can be no more than 35 cabinet ministers, this would means that there would be a quota system of around 9 MPs to one cabinet position. This means that Bhumjaithai would be entitled to 21 cabinet roles, Pheu Thai to 8 and Kla Tham to 6. Would that be enough cabinet roles to satisfy the various faction leaders in these three parties?

Finally, there were rumors that Bhumjaithai and Kla Tham incurred bad blood during the campaign. But as I said in my last post, all of this friction so far looks more like Bhumjaithai trying to gain some advantage in its coalition talks with Kla Tham and demonstrating that it is not dependent on its current junior partner.

Let’s say Anutin is genuinely looking for an alternative, however. He does have options: Bhumjaithai could invite the Democrat Party (22 MPs) instead of Kla Tham. It would be a “green exclusion pact,” as the Democrats continue to insist that they would not join any coalition that includes Kla Tham. This would take the coalition to over a little 300 MPs.

That said, Democrat leader Abhisit Vejjajiva has said he has not received any invitation from Bhumjaithai and is not waiting around for a phone call. Even without Kla Tham, there is no guarantee that the Democrats will join the government. Abhisit was the face of the anti-Thaksin forces for close to a decade, so it remains to be seen whether or not Pheu Thai and Abhisit’s Democrats can truly bury the past. The party already appears to be gearing up for an active role in opposition

A final option would be to simply pause where they are and add in other minor parties. This “purple coalition” would be viable at 280+ seats, and it would make Bhumjaithai and Pheu Thai’s cabinet negotiations relatively straightforward. But it would mean that Anutin would be very vulnerable to Pheu Thai’s veto power as the party could pull out of the coalition and take the government towards collapse at whatever point it wishes, and it looks unlikely that the prime minister will want to begin his second term under such a vulnerability.

Anutin certainly has several options to weigh in the coming days.

A huge controversy has come about regarding barcodes on election ballots, which I won’t cover here today but is discussed in the Bangkok Post.

This is an update on the aftermath of the general election, which has been marred by reports of irregularities during the vote-counting process. Pheu Thai has already argued that coalition negotiations should be delayed until these allegations are resolved, so all eyes will now be on watching how the Electoral Commission proceeds with the complaints.

What are the allegations?

We Watch, an election watchdog, alleged in a press conference that they observed several irregularities, including vote buying, discrepancies where the number of ballots did not match the number of voters, inaccurate voter rolls, obstruction of public oversight, confused staff who did not properly check voter IDs or incorrectly marked valid ballots as invalid, along with power outages during the vote count in one district. I am not sure of how widespread all these alleged irregularities were, based on this report.

The case most widely discussed in the media is Chonburi’s first district, where observers have come out in force since last night. The district was won by Bhumjaithai’s Suchart Chomklin (a deputy prime minister), with the current ECT count showing that he is ahead of the People’s Party by around four percent. There was a power outage at some units during the vote count, raising concerns. Tally sheets were reportedly found discarded in the trash, and this has led to demands for a recount. Suchart, for his part, compared the PP to “children throwing a tantrum for sweets” and said he was unconcerned about a recount.

Candidates from other parties have also questioned the election results. In Songkhla’s third district, Democrat candidate Attorney Arm Suwannaraksa raised questions about why there were 112,593 party-list ballots cast in the district, but only 98,923 constituency ballots — a gap of 13,670. Arm asked: “People of district 3, was there anyone who received a pink ballot and took home the green ballot? Where did the ten thousand ballots go?”

I doubt that the “nationwide recount” demanded by angry voters on Twitter will happen, although the EC will decide whether to hold a recount in some constituencies. The scale of Bhumjaithai’s victory also means it is highly unlikely that there will be any change to the overall election result. As Yingcheep Atchanont wrote, “changing the results unit by unit by hundreds or thousands cannot make Natthaphong the winner.” But it is clear that the EC will have to take time to clarify public doubts, and it will likely be unable to certify the election results anytime soon.

And one personal complaint: I do not quite understand what happened with the EC’s live results reporting dashboard, which was painfully slow to update on election night and has been stuck at 94 percent reporting even two days after the election.

Update on coalition negotiations

Publicly things are still quiet on the coalition negotiations front, but we have been hearing mixed reports about what is going on behind the scenes.

• Yesterday, there were rumors that Bhumjaithai was seeking to convince the People’s Party to change its mind and join a Bhumjaithai-led coalition, but PP leader Natthaphong Rueangpanyawut said that the party would not back down on its pledge not to support any Bhumjaithai PM candidate.

• There are also reports that Bhumjaithai is seeking to form a coalition with Pheu Thai and other small parties, in order to exclude Kla Tham, a result of bad blood incurred during the election. This is viable mathematically but I am skeptical that Kla Tham will just let Bhumjaithai leave them in the opposition, and this sounds more like a negotiating tactic.

• Bhumjaithai deputy leader Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn said that he believes an appropriate target for a coalition is around 300 seats.

Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul doesn’t appear to be in a rush to form a government, so it will likely be some time before we have any concrete updates on what the next coalition will look like.

Yesterday, at 31 percent reporting, Bhumjaithai was on track to win the general election by a sizable margin. That result has held. According to ThaiPBS, these are the current projections of seats at 94 percent reporting:

We have a clear Bhumjaithai victory.

The key takeaway: Bhumjaithai’s win

In the last piece before the general election, I wrote:

Thammasat University professor Prajak Kongkirati has noted, “Since 2001, when the party-list was introduced, no party has ever won the most seats without winning the party-list vote.” This general election will prove whether this law of Thai politics holds. On its surface, this is a much less dramatic narrative than the originally promised storyline. But it could be no less dramatic in its electoral outcome.

The outcome has been dramatic indeed. Bhumjaithai became the first party to successfully divorce its constituency results from the party-list vote share, allowing the PP to prevail on the seat-poor party list while winning a major haul of the seat-rich constituency ballot.

How did this happen? Perhaps it is because this was in many ways an ambiguous election: there was no single issue that animated voters. The issues that did come to the forefront, like the border conflict, were the ones that motivated conservative voters to support Bhumjaithai. Turnout fell from 75 percent in 2023 to 65 percent in 2026, likely reflecting the antipathy of PP and PT voters. These conditions favored the strong local networks of Bhumjaithai.

The PP did have a polling surge near the end of the campaign. “If those leads do not sweep away the local Bhumjaithai incumbents,” I wrote, “Anutin will have a good night. If they do, his hold on the premiership will look tenuous.” Remarkably, very few Bhumjaithai incumbents lost. Some were felled here and there; by and large, however, they held on, and made important gains. Anutin had a very good night.

Party by party instant analysis

All went according to plan for Bhumjaithai

I’ll have a longer piece out soon on the factors that led to Bhumjaithai’s victory, and I already described what I think were Bhumjaithai’s strengths in my previous piece. So I won’t say much more here other than to note that everything went to plan. In addition to its successful local strategy, the party successfully consolidated the conservative electorate behind it, winning even more party-list votes than Prayut Chan-o-cha did with United Thai Nation in 2023.

Strategic mistakes by the People’s Party put victory out of reach

The PP made at least two major strategic mistakes that doomed its election campaign. The first was its support for Anutin Charnvirakul as prime minister, after which the party’s popularity significantly decreased. While the numbers recovered in later polling, I would not be surprised if it was precisely these lukewarm PP supporters who couldn’t bother to turn out. Placing the benefits of incumbency in Anutin’s hands will likely be seen in retrospect as one of the clearest instances of political self-harm in recent Thai history. As Anutin said, “Without them on that day, there is no us today.” The party’s choice of prime minister candidates was its second strategic mistake: the slate simply could not excite its supporters in the same ways that Thanathorn Juangroongrueangkit or Pita Limjaroenrat did. All of this resulted in the party losing five million party-list votes since 2023.

In a consolation prize, the PP swept all of Bangkok’s 33 constituencies — something never done before in history, defying my own expectations that the PP’s decreased popularity might have allowed PT to snatch a few constituencies back. The gain of one Bangkok seat cannot make up for its loss of over twenty constituencies elsewhere, however, where the party’s decreased momentum appears to have faltered against Bhumjaithai and Kla Tham’s local networks.

Pheu Thai falters

PT saw both their constituency seats and their party-list vote share halved. This is a devastating result for the party. It was wiped out in its former stronghold of Chiang Mai and faltered in many areas in the North and Northeast. For the first time in its history, PT will be a mid-sized party that can at most play the role of a junior coalition partner. This isn’t necessarily an indictment of Yodchanan Wongsawat, who actually proved to be a capable campaigner. The party’s baggage from the previous administration has likely proven too heavy for anyone to lead the party to victory.

Kla Tham’s local-first strategy bears fruit

Kla Tham became the clearest example of how willing Thai voters are to split their ballots. The party won on the party-list ballot in only Phayao province, Thammanat Promphao’s stronghold. In total, they won only two party-list seats. But Kla Tham swept 56 constituencies, distributed across the country. That is more than even many expert forecasts, which already trended to emphasize local strength. It is a validation of what Thammanat has affirmed as his core political strategy: “Local politics is the root of larger politics…building a local political foundation is the most important thing.”

The Democrat Party lives to fight another day

On the surface, the Democrat Party’s performance seems disappointing; despite all the talk of revival the party actually lost seats compared to its 2023 performance. With only eight incumbent MPs left at the time of dissolution, the Democrats faced an uphill battle in winning constituency seats, and like the PP they failed to prevail over Bhumjaithai and Kla Tham’s local networks. But that top-line number disguises important trends. On the party-list ballot, at the time of writing the party has won 3.6 million votes. That is very close to the Democrats’ performance in 2019. That means that within just a few months of returning to lead the party, Abhisit Vejjajiva has managed to win back a substantial number of previous supporters. The map of party list results showed that the South has returned to being a sea of light blue. For a party that was widely seen as comatose just a few months earlier, living to fight another day will be seen as mission accomplished.

What comes next?

It’s early, but let’s run through some of the coalition math. First, some red lines:

• The People’s Party will keep its promise not to try to form a government if it lost the election, guaranteeing that they will lead the opposition

• Abhisit says that the Democrats are likely to be in opposition, as the party does not have enough seats to successfully pursue its policies, although he has left the door open to coalition talks

This leaves Pheu Thai and Kla Tham as the most likely coalition partners.

Technically, Bhumjaithai could form a government with its current partner Kla Tham. Or it could partner with just Pheu Thai. But that would make for a razor-thin majority that would be highly vulnerable to a vote of no confidence. Anutin is unlikely to risk that. He could invite some of the 35 MPs from the smaller parties, but not all of those parties will be willing to join this coalition.

It thus seems more likely to me that Anutin would want both Pheu Thai and a mid-sized coalition partner. He would thus have to make a choice between Kla Tham and the Democrats. A BJT + PT + KT coalition would create a very stable coalition (325 seats), while a BJT + PT + Democrat coalition would lead to a government that is stable enough (289 seats).

We’ll likely have more clarity on this front in the days ahead.

The vote count has been extremely slow to show on the Electoral Commission’s website, but based on the data we have so far, it is highly likely that Bhumjaithai will win the general election outright.

At around 9 pm, Thai media were forecasting the following results:

• Bhumjaithai: 198 seats (178 constituencies, 20 party-list)

• People’s Party: 97 seats (70 constituencies, 27 party-list)

• Pheu Thai: 86 seats (67 constituencies, 19 party-list)

• Kla Tham: 61 seats (59 constituencies, 2 party-list)

• Democrat: 21 seats (11 constituencies, 10 party-list)

Another website, Vote62.com, which says they have newer data than what is showing on the Electoral Commission’s website, is putting Bhumjaithai at around 174 seats and the People’s Party at about 150 seats.

It’s going to take quite some time before we get the total results, but I think it is virtually certain that Bhumjaithai will win outright. The People’s Party leader, Natthaphong Rueangpanyawut, has already conceded that based on current trends, the PP is unlikely to be the largest party, and the winner should be able to form a government.

Bhumjaithai successfully fought off a late PP surge and appears to have perfectly executed the playbook that I described earlier (indeed, exceeding expectations):

I think Bhumjaithai is well-positioned because it has attracted an immense number of baan yai (strong local clans) that, combined with their incumbents, positions them to be highly competitive in perhaps ~130 constituencies. They have also done just enough with building their national brand around a new technocratic team and attracting conservatives that they could perhaps win around 10-20 party-list seats.

This will be the first time in the 21st century that a conservative party has won the most seats in a general election, and it is a seismic shift in Thai politics.

I will have a lot more to say after we get final election results. But it looks like we are headed towards a Bhumjaithai-led coalition, most likely with Kla Tham (and potentially Pheu Thai, for maximum stability) as key coalition partners. Regardless of who the partners are, we know this: Anutin Charnvirakul will continue to serve as Thailand’s prime minister.

Some of my recent writing:

• The Bangkok Post ran an article that I wrote last week on the strategy of promoting technocrats that various parties are pursuing in the general election.

• I also wrote an FAQ on the constitutional referendum for Latitude Ten.

Unless something totally out of this world happens — like the appearance of the aliens that the PM candidate Mongkolkit Suksintharanon has proposed as potential partners for Thais — this will be my final piece before the election on February 8th.

Looking through slides for a presentation that I had made in 2023 a few months after the general election, I saw that I had described the grand compromise between Pheu Thai and the conservative parties as a surprise for voters, even if for politicians it may have been long in the coming. “This could point towards a Move Forward landslide at the next election as they are the only party to have kept their ideological purity,” I had written in my presenter notes.

The stage did indeed seem set for a pretty straightforward election. Move Forward, or whatever party succeeded it, was polling at stratospheric levels. Betrayed Pheu Thai voters and angry Move Forward voters would likely combine and significantly increase the orange camp’s seat haul.

Things are easy for political analysts when we can tell clear narratives. It looked likely that this election would go according to this storyline extending from 2023. And then, as Harold Macmillan would have known, events happened and washed it all away. The Cambodian conflict, the fall of Pheu Thai, and the emergence of the Bhumjaithai government with the support of the People’s Party upended that narrative.

Consider for a moment how you would summarize the 2026 general election.

Was this a referendum on the Bhumjaithai government, and whether or not Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has passed his probation period? The People’s Party has certainly tried to frame this election as a stark choice between dark blue and orange. Yet there remains strong support for Pheu Thai (and to a lesser extent, the Democrats).

Was this a national security election? Perhaps. The Cambodian border conflict has certainly assisted with Bhumjaithai’s rise in the polls, and the Paetongtarn Shinawatra voice call tanked Pheu Thai’s polling in the first place. The PP was certainly on uncomfortable terrain as it faced questions about its past rhetoric on the military. But the issue faded as the campaign went on; the PP continued to rise in the polls, as Bhumjaithai tried to cast the election as a choice between those who love and do not love the nation.

Was this an election centered around an underperforming economy? Bread and butter issues was not neglected, as parties talked up their upgrades on khon la khrueng and Pheu Thai promised to make nine people a day millionaires. But there is little evidence that economic policy has meaningfully moved the needle for any of the political parties.

Was this a clash of personalities? We have the self-described introvert Natthaphong Rueangpanyawut, who often polled behind his party. We have Yodchanan Wongsawat, an understated academic. We have Anutin, who does not spark feelings as strong both for or against as his conservative predecessors. This is certainly unlike 2023 , when almost everyone had love-hate reactions towards figures like Prayut Chan-o-cha and Pita Limjaroenrat.

Was this a fight over radical change versus the status quo? One could argue that the People’s Party has, as Akanit Horatanakun put it, shifted “towards elite accommodation and electoral pragmatism.” The referendum on the constitution has felt muted and generated less enthusiasm than one might have expected.

Was this a battle over starkly different visions of Thailand? We should not downplay the differences between the three major parties. But they have also largely left the door open to future collaboration in a potential coalition government, indirectly confirming that few of the differences so stark that they cannot be bridged.

The unsatisfying result is an election that feels ambiguous: perhaps a natural conclusion to the preceding parliamentary term where grand compromises eroded party brands and politicians learned the perils of excessive clarity.

It’s interesting to note, as well, how little anything during this campaign has seemed to move the needle in any direction. There were no big moments that led to mass defection from a party. There has yet to be a surprise, come-from-behind shift by any party on the national level. The biggest movement we saw in the polls was that undecided voters gravitated towards the PP. But was this the result of persuasion, or the inevitable consequence of progressive voters who — initially angry about the surprising deal with Bhumjaithai — realizing they disliked all the other options more?

The election will likely come down to a question of if, and how much, the national-local gap that we saw in 2023 will close. Ballot splitting was the lifeblood that allowed many parties to survive in the last election. Last week, I wrote about how there are some flashing warning signs for Bhumjaithai, as the Democrats gained steam in the south and the PP increased its lead elsewhere. If those leads do not sweep away the local Bhumjaithai incumbents, Anutin will have a good night. If they do, his hold on the premiership will look tenuous.

Thammasat University professor Prajak Kongkirati has noted, “Since 2001, when the party-list was introduced, no party has ever won the most seats without winning the party-list vote.” This general election will prove whether this law of Thai politics holds. On its surface, this is a much less dramatic narrative than the originally promised storyline. But it could be no less dramatic in its electoral outcome.

Final pitches

All of the major parties will be holding their final election rallies on the evening of February 6th. Already, however, we can see what the final pitches the parties are making are:

• Bhumjaithai is arguing that they are the “only party that Cambodia is afraid of,” while pitching to voters that a vote for a party is a vote for the technocratic “professionals” who can “transform the economy.”

• The People’s Party has brought out former MFP leader Pita Limjaroenrat to its final rallies to add star power. The party has asked voters to support the party on both ballots to give it enough seats to form a “people’s government.”

• Pheu Thai has repeatedly leaned on PM candidate Yodchanan Wongsawat (calling it “Yodchanan fever”) and his readiness to lead the country.

• The Democrats are arguing that they are a “safe option” for voters who are concerned about corruption and “divisive issues.” They are beseeching voters to give the party enough seats to “control the game” of coalition formation.

We’ll be back after February 8th to analyze the election results!

In late December, I wrote a piece on how Bhumjaithai was able to position themselves as the early frontrunner in this election. Over a month since then, and with less than two weeks to go before February 8th, I think we have enough data to be able to pinpoint how warning signs have emerged that could heavily complicate Bhumjaithai’s ability to be in a position to lead the next government.

Thoughts on seat forecasts

First, a few words on the current seat forecasts.

Since I wrote my piece, the expert opinion has largely coalesced around predicting that Bhumjaithai would indeed win the most seats. (I want to note that the piece was written before most of these expert predictions, lest I be accused of following the herd!) Bhumjaithai is usually projected to win around 140-150 seats. The People’s Party is typically predicted to win around 120-130 seats, while Pheu Thai would win anything between 80-120 seats.

As BYU Professor Joel Selway has argued in this piece on Thai Data Points, however, these expert predictions are contradicted by the polling, and using what he calls the “party transfer method”1 would actually point to the People’s Party winning 236 seats and Bhumjaithai winning 145 seats, and Pheu Thai winning as few as 45 seats. Of course, this is not in itself a seat forecast, either. As I always say in post after post, the polling largely captures the party-list result but not the constituency result, and as Professor Selway notes, “parties with strong local organization can outperform their national polling, while parties with broad but shallow support can struggle to convert votes into seats.”

As a result, it is virtually impossible to be confident about seat forecasts unless you are polling in every constituency and you know enough about the dynamics of individual constituencies to be able to predict whether a candidate is sufficiently formidable locally to overcome bad party polling. This is why I wrote in my midway vibe check that there is good reason to believe Bhumjaithai to be competitive in ~130 constituencies while also winning perhaps 20 party list seats based on the national polling. I did not, however, make a forecast because I do not have enough information about all the individual seat dynamics — something that is unavailable to virtually anyone without access to detailed internal party polling. In other words: if someone gets their seat forecast right, I think they basically made a lucky guess!

National vs local is the defining question

Expert forecasts tend to place a lot of emphasis on local candidate strength, while a strictly polling-based forecast would largely take into account the national sentiment. The fundamental question we have at this juncture in the campaign, therefore, is whether the national or the local will take precedence in this election.

This question is important because it determines how much ballot splitting we might see. Last week, I wrote about this in the case of the South, where the Democrats are surging. Another NIDA poll that was released yesterday showed that the Democrats were now polling at over 50 percent in the major Southern province of Nakhon Sri Thammarat, far ahead of Bhumjaithai at around 17 percent.

If that is true, it would not be inconceivable that we start seeing Democrat upsets of both Bhumjaithai and Kla Tham in more rural constituencies. (For context, the Democrats won around 22 percent of the constituency vote and a mere 8 percent of the party-list vote in 2023, when they won 6 of 10 seats). A local poll of all seven constituencies in Songkhla conducted by Songkhla Ratchaphat University revealed that the Democrats could indeed be on the verge of a few unexpected victories. As I said last week, if the Democrats manage to make a dent in Bhumjaithai’s expected Southern gains, that could seriously hamper the party’s national goals.

Nationally, the NIDA polling has revealed that the People’s Party is gaining momentum after a slow start to the campaign. I noted in my midway point analysis that the PP was rising in the polls, although it was still registering below its 2023 performance. We have two interesting local clues, however. The PP polled at around 37 percent in NIDA’s Chiang Mai poll, and then at around 42 percent in their Samut Prakan Poll. Both results are only a few percentage points away from how Move Forward performed in both provinces respectively. All of this polling has come before Pita Limjaroenrat’s return to the campaign trail, which may help move the needle further towards the PP’s favor.

All of this paints a similar picture: the parties that are riding national waves of support (the PP and the Democrats) are surging in the polls, while Bhumjaithai’s gains are more limited. Perhaps the party is trying to respond to this vibe shift. It is wheeling out its more popular figures like Supajee Suthumpun and Ekniti Nitithanpraphas to more campaign events. It has also sharpened its rhetoric, with deputy leader Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn arguing that people should vote for “parties that love the country” and refrain from supporting “parties that don’t love the country.”

Ultimately, what we are seeing is the most unpredictable election in years. We just do not know at this juncture whether it’s more likely for national sentiment to beat out local attachments, or vice versa. After all, there’s no scientific way to pin down the tipping point where a party polls well enough to float all its boats in the constituencies. What we do know is that there are some warning signs for Bhumjaithai, and the party may not have the glide path to leading the next government that was predicted at the start.

At the same time, however, if the polls are overstating the PP and the Democrats’ support, Bhumjaithai could indeed still be on a glide path back to Government House. Polls, after all, are not a guarantee that respondents will turn out, and if PP enthusiasm proves to be a mirage, parties like Bhumjaithai and Pheu Thai could indeed be in the beneficiaries in the final vote share.

Addendum: internal polling

Just for fun, here’s a roundup of seat goals and internal polling that different party leaders have put out recently.

• The PP secretary-general, Sarayut Jailak, says that if the party fails to win at least 200 seats he will resign.

• Anutin argues that 150 seats is “too few” for Bhumjaithai, and a ThaiPBS article said Bhumjaithai sources are projecting 180 seats.

• Yodchanan Wongsawat says that Pheu Thai’s internal polls suggest the party could win 150-200 seats.

• Abhisit Vejjajiva said that the Democrats’ internal polling suggested the party could be on track to win up to 40-50 seats if all goes well.

Of course, it’s not all possible for all of these internal polls to be correct, because then we would have to expand parliament beyond the current 500 seats! But perhaps it’s a reminder that no party — especially not the top three — can be completely counted out yet. No public poll has indicated that Pheu Thai, for example, is on track to win anything close to 200 seats, but the party seems to be projecting genuine confidence. Only less than two weeks to go before we find out which party does the best polling.

Pheu Thai leader and PM candidate Julapun Amornvivat raised eyebrows when he announced a new policy to give out one million baht to nine people every day. One person each day would be selected from the following four groups: those who file personal income tax forms, people aged 60 and older, registered farmers, and public volunteers. The other five would come from those who have VAT receipts.

What is the rationale for such a policy? From Prommin Lertsuridej’s defense of this policy, as summarized by the Thai Enquirer:

Under the proposal, nine people would receive 1 million baht each day, funded by an annual prize budget of 3.285 billion baht, as an incentive for taxpayers, registered groups and consumers to participate in the formal economy.

Prommin said that if Thailand could increase tax intake by just over 10%, the state would gain about 100 billion baht a year, compared with current value-added tax revenue of 800–900 billion baht annually, making the policy a worthwhile investment.

Or as Pheu Thai puts it on their website: “this policy is the smartest investment…if the VAT tax base increases by 20 percent, equivalent to the Taiwanese model, the government’s revenue would increase by 200 billion baht annually.”

Quite the policy announcement, isn’t it? Predictably, other parties have a lot of thoughts. The People’s Party deputy leader Sirikanya Tansakun said that with relatively few people benefiting each year, there may be insufficient incentive for those in the informal economy to join the scheme. Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva said that he would rather invest the money into skills development.

But let’s just discuss the electoral implications first. It is clear that Pheu Thai has not dropped its traditional playbook of promoting eye-catching economic policies. I thought it would have been virtually impossible to top the 10,000 baht giveaway that Pheu Thai used as its flagship policy in 2023, but they’ve somehow managed to go two digits bigger this time. But there are two major differences between what they’re proposing this year and previous rounds of what critics have dubbed economic populism.

For one, this is the first time Pheu Thai is proposing a major policy under the shadow of public doubt about its ability to fulfill its promises. In a way, it is the 10,000 baht policy that could prove to be the undoing of the 1 million baht giveaway’s electoral effectiveness. After all, it never happened at the scale that Pheu Thai promised, as in the end it was limited mostly to vulnerable groups. “Pheu Thai can do it” is the party’s slogan this year, but the fact that their most memorable policy of 2023 remained largely unfulfilled may indeed prompt some voters to harbor doubts.

The other major difference between the 10,000 baht and one million baht policy concerns its scope: the former was supposed to be guaranteed to every Thai above the age of 18, while the latter depends on random chance. Even Bhumjaithai’s Khon La Khrueng Plus covers a reasonable swathe of voters. So even if you want to be a millionaire, you would still have to contend with the roughly 0.0046 percent chance a year that you would receive the giveaway. Can the probability of winning the lottery motivate people to vote for Pheu Thai? (Let’s also not forget that Pheu Thai lost the 2023 election despite promising a guaranteed 10,000 baht — so even that wasn’t enough).

It’s worth taking a moment to recall Pheu Thai’s key policies this year: before the one million baht giveaway, they have also announced an informal debt forgiveness scheme, an income top-up to ensure every person makes at least 3,000 baht a month, and a Khon La Khrueng Pro Max scheme where the government would subsidize 70% of the cost of payments at participating SMEs. None of this has, so far, moved the needle much for Pheu Thai’s numbers, as we saw in previous national polls. Even if the one million baht giveaway can shift some voters, the party still has a lot of ground to make up.

Southern Thailand has emerged as one of the most fiercely contested battlegrounds in this election, with a different dynamic to the other regions. I thought it was worth taking some time today to examine what has been happening in this region.

The South is, of course, the historical stronghold of the Democrat Party. There was a time when it was said that the party could field an electric pole as a candidate and the pole would win. But the Democrats’ dominance have faded over the past two elections. From a unified, unending stretch of light blue, Democrat control of the South was greatly diminished by 2023, reduced to a rump in the lower South as other parties ate into their vote share. The southern candidates that had won in 2023 had done so less based on the strength of the party brand and more on their individual local capacities. When a parliamentary dissolution was put on the horizon, these candidates began negotiating to move parties. And with their exit, a potential Democrat extinction in the South.

Among the parties the defectors have chosen is Bhumjaithai. At this election, Bhumjaithai’s Southern strategist Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn has announced that the party is aiming to win at least 31 of the region’s 59 constituencies. That would be up from the 12 won in 2023, and it is clearly an important component of Bhumjaithai’s bid to become the largest party in parliament. In a tight election such as this, Bhumjaithai’s ability to win big in the South could very well be the difference between first and second place. Kla Tham, meanwhile, has also re-homed several ex-Democrat incumbents, with former Democrat leader Chalermchai Sri-orn himself appearing at a Kla Tham event to express support for Thammanat Promphao.

But Abhisit Vejjajiva’s return to the Democrats has immediately revived a moribund party. A NIDA poll from Songkhla province showed Abhisit and the Democrats polling at upwards of 40 percent, far ahead of both the People’s Party and Bhumjaithai. It is a tally that is likely representative from the region as a whole. Abhisit’s return, to put in another way, seems to have reawakened the region’s historic attachment to the party — something much easier to do now that former prime minister Prayut Chan-o-cha is out of the picture. At first glance, this should indicate that the Democrats would be able to win back the South. But the reality is not so simple.

Let’s take Songkhla province, where the NIDA poll was conducted. Songkhla is home to nine constituencies:

• District 1: The Bhumjaithai incumbent (who recently switched from the Democrats) is almost certain to win.

• District 2: A three-way contest between Bhumjaithai incumbent Sarttra Sripan, popular Democrat candidate Jury Numkaew (a famous TikTok star), and a strong People’s Party challenger Supat Hasuwannakit. The result here will be a coin toss.

• District 3: The heavy favorite is the Bhumjaithai candidate, an ex-Democrat who recently switched parties.

• District 4: A Kla Tham incumbent was favored, although a legal inquiry against him may open up room for the Democrats.

• District 5: Previously held by former Democrat secretary-general Dech-it Khaothong, his son is now running under the Kla Tham banner and is currently favored.

• District 6: A two-way contest between Bhumjaithai and Kla Tham.

• District 7: A Bhumjaithai candidate is favored, although former Democrat MP Sirichok Sopha is mounting a stiff challenge to retake his seat.

• District 8: Appears to mainly be a two-way contest between a Kla Tham incumbent who switched from the Democrats, and a Bhumjaithai challenger.

• District 9: The Democrat incumbent (another son of Dech-it’s) is heavily favored.

The result of this analysis is counterintuitive: in a province where the Democrats are way ahead in the polls, they are currently virtually guaranteed to win in only one constituency, with a good chance in another and an outside chance in two more! A similar picture repeats itself across the region. There are a few constituencies here and there where Democrat incumbents look impregnable, but in many cases Bhumjaithai and Kla Tham are the main contestants. In the worst case scenario, it is possible that the Democrats’ seat-total in the South could be in the low single digits.

But if the Democrats’ polling continue to improve, then the baan yai might become vulnerable to an upset, similarly to how Move Forward was able to use its momentum to topple a bunch of provincial clans in 2023. In that case, all bets are off, and we could see the Democrats significantly overperform expectations. In the meantime, however, the constituency candidates can only try to persuade voters to mark down the Democrats in both ballots. As Sirichok Sopha pleaded on his Facebook post, “if you love the Democrats and love Abhisit, you cannot give just half your love.”

Will such a message work? Bhumjaithai’s position in the campaign is a little complicated, which does provide an opening: it has after all been weighed down by the recent floods. Phiphat is thus making a bet that Southern voters will be receptive to another pitch: that they should “take back the thirty lost years” — implying that the Southern region has not grown sufficiently under the Democrats’ stewardship — and vote for Bhumjaithai in order to bring infrastructure development. In response, former Democrat prime minister Chuan Leekpai retorted that under his premiership, he did not focus only on regions that voted for him, while Abhisit noted that the Democrats have rarely ever had control of infrastructure-heavy ministries.

How the South swings could end up being an important determinant of the larger national picture. Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has said that academic projections that Bhumjaithai will win around 150 seats are “too low.” But the fact that the South has been unwilling to end its decades-long loyalty towards the Democrats, at least on the party-list, could pose a challenge to Bhumjaithai’s ability to meet its larger goals.