The numbers of the 2005 election

28 feb 2005

At the end of 2003, Thaksin promised to win the next election by an “avalanche”. He kept his word. But the numbers now emerging from the poll results tell some other stories too.

Thailand’s political map is more starkly split than ever before. The border starts just west of Bangkok and runs along the top of Samut Songkhram and Phetchaburi provinces to the Tenasserim hills. North and east of that line, Thai Rak Thai won 308 of the 339 constituencies. South of it, they won only two ­­ one with the help of the tsunami and only by a hair.

By contrast, the Democrats won all but three of the 61 constituencies south of the line, but only 12 of the 339 available elsewhere.

What makes this division even more stark is that both sides of the line the victors won by a mile. On average across the country, the winning candidate polled over 60 percent of the votes cast, and won by a margin of over 30 percent. Very, very few constituencies had a close race. On either side of the border, voters went whole hog, but for a different party.

Another theme of this election is that rather little changed. According to Chang Noi’s count, the breakdown of the 400 territorial constituencies goes like this: 290 were won by the sitting MP; 4 by  party list MPs; 13 by people who had been an MP prior to 2001; and at least 13 by relatives of the sitting MP (mostly a son or daughter “inheriting” the seat). In sum, 334 of those elected are “old faces” (or their new incarnation), and only 76 really count as new.

Some of those who sailed back after being absent for the past four years are among the great old war-horses of Thai politics like Ruangwit Lik, Chucheep Hansawat, Iam Thongjaisod, and Veerakorn Khamprakorb.

This contrasts with 2001, when about 155 of those elected were new faces, and quite a number of the old war-horses lost (including Ruangwit, Chucheep, Iam, and Veerakorn). It also contrasts with prior Thai elections when the turnover was usually about a third.

The number of constituencies where there was a real change, meaning that both the person and the party which won the seat were different from 2001, was only 59. These changes were concentrated mainly in Bangkok and the central region. In the other regions, such real changes were very, very scarce.

Only 44 sitting MPs were defeated. But these were not simply TRT victories over Democrats, as might be imagined from the overall result. Of these defeats, 20 were Democrats but another 17 were sitting MPs from TRT or from parties which had merged into TRT.

This indicates how much Thai Rak Thai’s impressive victory has two components of roughly equal weight. Certainly, the party proved that it is more popular now than it was in 2001. But also, it has corralled more of the good local candidates into the party than was the case in 2001. Some of these were acquired by the merger and acquisition of three parties – Seritham, New Aspiration, Chat Phatthana. But some were lured individually from other parties.

So TRT’s 310 MPs are quite a mixed lot. Only 171 are sitting MPs who won in 2001 under the TRT banner. Another 45 are sitting MPs acquired by the merger of the Seritham, New Aspiration, and Chat Phatthana parties. Another 21 are sitting MPs who have defected from other parties – 7 from the Democrats and 14 from Chat Thai. Add onto that another 17 who were previously party list MPs or who been MPs prior to 2001, and at least 9 more who are political heirs inheriting the seat from a sitting MP.

There were only 19 constituencies in which a TRT new face defeated a sitting Democrat.

The other remarkable thing about the election is the survival of the old fox, Banharn Silpa-archa and the Chat Thai party. In 2001, Chat Thai scraped over the bar of 5 percent needed to get any party list seats by only a couple of decimal points. Since then, two of the party’s three local fortresses – Chonburi and Buriram – have gone over to Thai Rak Thai, leaving only Suphanburi. Because votes for the constituency candidate and the party list are highly correlated, it seemed impossible that Chat Thai would make it onto the party list this time round. In the last few weeks before the poll, Thaksin went for the kill by announcing that “Banharn has changed, he’s not the same as before”, and making it clear Chat Thai would not be part of his coalition.

But Banharn defended Suphanburi like a lion, and took four seats away from TRT in the northeast. Chat Thai managed to hold onto 18 constituencies against the 35 last time round. More surprisingly, it ended up with 8 party list seats, 2 more than in 2001.

With only half the number of successful constituency candidates this time, his success on the party list had to come from people who voted for two different parties on their constituency and party-list voting slips. This could happen for two reasons. First, people who liked their local TRT candidate (who might not have been TRT in the past), but didn’t want to vote for Thaksin on the party-list. Second, people who were taken by Chat Thai’s new recruit, the hammer-man, Chuwit Kamolvisit, and thus gave their party-list vote to Chat Thai.

Either way it suggests that for many people who did not want to vote for Thaksin and TRT on the party lists, Chuwit and Chat Thai seemed more attractive than the Democrats or Mahachon. The transformation of this ex-mega-pimp and occasional vandal into the “virtual” leader of the opposition is the second big story of this election after the triumph of Thaksin. And these two stories together tell us a lot about Thai politics today.