Campaign Midway Point Vibe Check

Thoughts on latest NIDA forecast

We’re currently at about the halfway point of the election campaign, and I thought it would be a good idea to take stock of where we stand and what we’ve seen so far.

First off, some new polling results. NIDA released another poll result on January 11.

The most notable thing about this poll was the sharp drop in the historically high number of undecideds, which I have argued may be the population that end up swinging the election. The People’s Party appears to be the biggest beneficiary, registering around 30 percent support, followed by Bhumjaithai at 22 percent. Pheu Thai and the Democrats have made smaller gains, standing at around 15 and 12 percent respectively. The question of this NIDA poll is worded slightly differently to the quarterly polling, asking which party respondents are most inclined to support rather than which party they currently support. But I think overall this is a minor language change and the drop in undecided voters is probably very genuine.

Based on these polling results, the NIDA Director Suvicha Pouaree also made the following seat forecasts:

• Bhumjaithai: 140-150 seats

• People’s Party: 120-130 seats

• Pheu Thai: 70-80 seats

• Democrat: 40 seats

• Kla Tham: 40 seats

• All other parties: 60 seats

First, some caveats. Things can change a lot between now and the election! Based on the polling in 2023, NIDA initially forecasted that Pheu Thai would win 164-172 seats and Move Forward would win only 80-88 seats, and it wasn’t until they conducted their last-minute polling were they able to detect the final shifts in voter movement that allowed them to accurately predict that MFP would, for example, sweep all the Bangkok seats and come in first place. So treat this as a snapshot in time. With that caveat in mind, here are some of my thoughts.

Their forecast that Bhumjaithai is poised to win the most seats fits with my analysis that Bhumjaithai is the early frontrunner in the general election. At risk of self-repetition (but it’s a worthy repetition), 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. (Indeed, Anutin is now explicitly asking former Prayut (“Loong Too”) supporters to support “Loong Noo” instead. In the best case scenario, they could indeed win up to 150 seats. This might not be enough to win in the past when there were two dominant parties, but in the more fractured tripolar political landscape we find ourselves, it could very well put them in first place and allow them to lead the formation of a government.

With their polling at around 30 percent, the People’s Party is doing better than previously, although this is still below what they won in 2023 (which, to be sure, was enough to win but not enough to prevent the formation of an alternative coalition). The PP unveiled their team of “professionals” who will staff a PP government, but it’s uncertain how helpful this has been to the campaign. There are a lot of figures (which ironically perhaps blunts the impact of the announcement, as people aren’t sure who to focus on), and many are not household names. I do think that the PP is managing to consolidate their support base, but they appear to be finding expansion more tricky. As former KPI Director Stithorn Thananithichot told the Bangkok Post, unlike in 2023, the current political environment simply does not favor the PP. This could blunt the party’s room to grow.

I do wonder if the forecast is a little too bearish on Pheu Thai. The party’s polling is still significantly lower than in previous years, and they are on track to win fewer party-list seats than before. But recall that Pheu Thai won 112 constituency seats in 2023, and most (but not all) of their baan yai have decided to stick with the party. In fact, some baan yai have even moved to Pheu Thai, significantly bolstering their chances in some provinces. Their candidate for PM, Yodchanan Wongsawat, is proving to be a competent campaigner, although it remains to be seen whether their new policies (such as “Khon la khrueng Pro Max”) will move the needle. I also think that with the PP down, Pheu Thai is actually best positioned to take advantage in some of the outer Bangkok constituencies where they possess local strength. It’s still difficult to imagine PT winning outright, but I wouldn’t totally dismiss the chances that they can win significantly more seats than what the NIDA forecast suggests.

Not even the Democrat leadership is willing to put any numbers on how many seats they expect to win, saying only that they hope to significantly increase their party-list seats. The reason is no one knows what will happen on the constituency ballot. Based on the Southern polling, the Democrats should win big, but with almost all their incumbents having defected, the local party organization seems to be a shell of its former self. If “Abhisit fever” continues to convert even more Southerners back to the Democrat cause, the party’s favorability may become a tide that lifts up a lot of boats, but with what we’re seeing now their constituency wins are still expected to be more limited. If things go badly, I imagine the Democrats’s total haul could very well be less than 20 seats (i.e. almost all their seats come from the party-list), but if things go well, they could pick up several seats in the South that take them to a total more similar to what NIDA is projecting.

And with Kla Tham: well, they don’t register at all in the polls, although they have several formidable local candidates. (We probably have a “shy Kla Tham voter” phenomenon, who aren’t willing to tell pollsters their true intentions). So their total seat number is very much TBD.

We’ll have plenty more to discuss as the campaign enters the final month, and I do expect this baseline to still shift as things progress. I plan to write more about the South as well (which is emerging as one of the most fiercely contested battlegrounds of this election), and the region could very well determine whether Bhumjaithai meets its goals. More soon!