BBC:
As the dust from what has been a hard-fought election campaign in Thailand settles, many Thais may be rubbing their eyes and asking, “what just happened?”.
Most of the opinion polls published before the election predicted a win for the progressive People’s Party. Some suggested it would get more than 200 seats in parliament, a significant improvement on its already impressive 2023 result when it won 151. Few polls put the party of Prime Minister Anutin Chanrvirakul ahead.
Yet once most of the votes had been counted, it was clear Anutin had achieved a stunning victory, and the young reformists had suffered a big setback. With a projected share of more than 190 seats, the path of Anutin’s Bhumjaithai party is clear to form the next government, albeit with coalition partners.
So why did a youthful, progressive party with an imaginative and tech-savvy campaign do so poorly compared to a transactional, old-style party with little ideological identity aside from strong loyalty to the monarchy?
