After the Grand Compromise: Voter Profiles in Thai Politics

INTRODUCTION

The Move Forward Party’s (MFP) unexpected victory in the 2023 general election set the stage for a grand compromise between political elites who had been at odds for nearly two decades. To block the MFP from power and quell the resurgence of pro-democracy movements rallying behind its pledge to amend the lèse-majesté law, a deal was struck between forces aligned with then-exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, represented by the Pheu Thai Party, and the conservative establishment that had previously worked relentlessly to snuff out his political influence through military coups, judicial interventions, party dissolutions, and constitutional engineering.

As part of what is now widely seen as the fulfilment of that “deal,” Thaksin returned to Thailand without serving a real jail term. With the backing of conservative and military-aligned parties, his party formed a coalition government that excluded the MFP. In principle, this move betrayed the expectations of supporters who had counted on Pheu Thai to stand with the MFP in opposing parties linked to the military generals behind the 2014 coup and the military-backed governments that followed. Over the course of a year, not just one but two Pheu Thai prime ministers — real estate tycoon Srettha Thavisin and Thaksin’s youngest daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra — rose to power with the support of the same alliance. Though the coalition eventually lost the support of General Prawit Wongsuwan’s Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP) after Paetongtarn’s cabinet was formed in 2024, it has brought in the Democrat Party, a party whose identity for over a decade had been defined by its opposition to Thaksin and his parties. With this, the once-rigid divide between pro- and anti-Thaksin forces, as well as the split between those defending the institutional legacies of the 2014 coup and those seeking to dismantle them, has been superseded by a new elite settlement shaped less by parties’ commitments to their constituents and more by the shared imperative of staying in power (and keeping the MFP out of power).

While this alliance reflects a new consensus among political elites, its impact on ordinary Thai voters is far less straightforward. Some supporters of parties that reneged on their ideological commitments to join the coalition may view it as an unsavoury but ultimately pragmatic solution for breaking the deadlock created by the MFP’s victory, blocking the MFP from power, and securing their parties a place in government. For these voters, their parties’ decisions to cut a deal with their former rivals from across the ideological spectrum will be judged not on principle, but on whether they yield tangible outcomes, such as blocking progressive reforms to Thailand’s institutional pillars or advancing specific economic agendas, particularly those of a populist nature. As long as these goals are met, these voters are unlikely to punish their parties for any compromises made along the way.

However, what some view as an arrangement born of necessity may be seen by others as a “toxic alliance” or “promiscuous power-sharing” by political elites that betrays the ideological commitments and rivalries that once defined these parties and set them apart electorally. Voters in this latter category may come to resent their parties for what amounts to depriving them of the opportunity to vote against a particular party or leader — or worse, distorting their electoral mandate to empower the very forces they sought to reject. Forgive and forget will not come easily — not when deep-seated ideological conflicts and grievances that have long shaped their political convictions remain unresolved or are deliberately whitewashed to window-dress the alliance as a genuine reconciliation. These may include, for example, the Red Shirt massacre or the Tak Bai massacre, as well as the reopening of old wounds among Thai conservatives as Thaksin reasserts his influence through his daughter’s government on a range of issues that could reignite long-standing political tensions.

As the old divisions that led to Thaksin’s removal continue to fester beneath a new elite pact ushered in by his return, and as new fractures — particularly those concerning the role and status of the Thai monarchy — remain unaddressed by the existing political system, Thailand’s political and party landscape appears to be on course for significant turbulence. Whereas previous research has focused on elite cohesion as the key determinant of the grand compromise’s outcome, this study argues that voter responses will be equally, if not more, crucial in shaping its long-term implications for the party system and for party institutionalisation. Drawing on the results of the 2023 general election and a post-2023 election survey of Thai voters, we develop a new typology that classifies voters into four groups based on their attitudes toward Thaksin Shinawatra and the conservative establishment. We then assess how the grand compromise may influence these voter groups and what this means for electoral dynamics in the next general election.

THAKSIN AND THE ESTABLISHMENT: A TYPOLOGY OF THAI VOTERS

Due to a history of bureaucratic dominance, frequent military interventions, and the persistence of factionalism and patronage, existing societal cleavages in Thailand—such as urban-rural, class, regional, and ethnic divides—that could have influenced party alignments have remained largely subdued throughout the development of the Thai party system. However, the rise of Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai Rak Thai Party in 2001 contributed to sharp polarisation rooted in some of these previously dormant cleavages. For more than a decade thereafter, working-class and rural poor voters in the North and Northeast rallied behind Thaksin, forming the core of the Red-shirt movement, while relatively affluent urban middle-class voters in Bangkok and Eastern Thailand, along with conservative voters in the South coalesced around the Democrat Party and the Yellow-shirt movement to oppose what they saw as a populist takeover of a system that had long safeguarded their interests, values, and cherished institutions.

The 2014 coup against the Thaksin-dominated Yingluck Shinawatra government, followed by a prolonged military rule, did not reconcile these divides despite what the military regime promised upon seizing power. Instead, it gave rise to a new cleavage: between those supporting the continuation of the post-coup conservative status quo and those advocating for the dismantling of its legacies, along with other appendages that the conservative establishment had maintained since the 2006 coup — or even earlier. In both the 2019 and 2023 general elections, this cleavage became increasingly salient, reflecting deeper ideological and generational divides over key issues such as political reform, the role of the monarchy, and military influence in politics.

Two highly visible fault lines have, therefore, come to overshadow other cleavages in shaping partisan alignment. The first revolves around attitudes towards Thaksin Shinawatra. The second concerns attitudes towards the conservative establishment. We define these attitudes broadly as warmth of feeling and receptivity towards the continued influence of Thaksin Shinawatra on one hand, and Thailand’s traditional centres of power on the other.

Table 1. Typology of Thai Voters

	Pro-Establishment	Anti-Establishment
Pro-Thaksin	Reconciliatory conservatives (Main party of choice in 2023: N/A)	Populist reformists (Main party of choice in 2023: Pheu Thai)
Anti-Thaksin	Traditional conservatives (Main party of choice in 2023: United Thai Nation)	Progressive reformists (Main party of choice in 2023: Move Forward)

What evidence is there that such polarisation in attitudes along these two axes exists? Firstly, it conforms with how voters have behaved in the past, where there has been very little cross-camp voting, which we also elaborate on further in the next section. On the divide over establishment stances, Napon Jatusripitak and Jacob Ricks’ analysis of a 2023 online survey found that voters who prioritise protecting the nation, religion, and monarchy are less likely to support a pro-democracy party (those outside Prayut’s coalition government), while those opposing military involvement in politics are more likely to do so. Secondly, we have other suggestive survey evidence. In a survey conducted in 2023 respondents were asked to rate politicians’ favourability on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 representing the lowest favourability and 5 representing the highest favourability. Here, we use favourability towards Prayut Chan-o-cha and Pita Limjaroenrat as a proxy for attitudes towards the establishment; although this is by no means a perfect proxy, high favourability towards Prayut likely represents greater warmth of feeling for the conservative establishment, while high favourability towards Pita likely represents a greater degree of antipathy towards the conservative establishment. We are also able to measure favourability towards Thaksin directly as respondents were also asked to rate their approval of Thaksin. A boxplot of these three politicians’ favourability ratings can be seen in Figure 1. While acknowledging that favourability ratings may not fully capture the political preferences central to our concepts of interest, the results nonetheless reveal meaningful patterns that underscore broader attitudinal divides and their correlation with party alignment. Based on these findings and our theoretical expectations, Thai voters can be categorised into the following groups—not as a perfect reflection, but as a useful framework for understanding current and future party alignment.

Figure 1. Politicians’ Favourability by Party

1. Reconciliatory conservatives are voters who are both pro-establishment and pro-Thaksin, and are thus the most comfortable with the grand compromise that was forged after the 2023 general election. However, we expect that voters who fit this description are relatively few in number, especially given that no political parties in the 2023 general election—or in previous elections—have explicitly positioned themselves in this way. Instead, this attitude is likely confined to the elite level, among Pheu Thai MPs who have never fully aligned with more radical elements within the party that openly challenged the establishment, as well as in formerly anti-Thaksin parties such as the United Thai Nation Party. While the latter may still harbour some reservations about Thaksin, they are, at least for now, willing to continue supporting the Paetongtarn government as part of a broader effort to maintain stability and keep the MFP out of power.
2. Traditional conservatives are staunchly royalist and pro-establishment voters who continue to harbour deep distaste for Thaksin, and for whom the conservative parties’ embrace of Thaksin has far outrun their comfort zone. These voters would mostly have voted for the United Thai Nation Party (UTN) in 2023. Their greater fear of the possible emergence of a People’s Party-led coalition may lead them to begrudgingly accept this arrangement and even sympathise with the stances of parties like the UTN. However, their discomfort with the alliance is likely to be high. The survey found that UTN voters had extremely unfavourable views of Thaksin, giving him a median favourability score of just 1. The same applied to Pita. Prayut, on the other hand, was rated highly.
3. Populist reformists are those who are both anti-establishment and pro-Thaksin. These voters form the core support base of Thaksin and his parties, viewing them as a force for democracy capable not only of mounting a credible challenge to Thailand’s entrenched conservative order but also of delivering tangible economic improvements through policies that uplift rural and working-class communities who have long been marginalised by that very system. For such voters, the grand compromise was likely a disappointment, especially after party leaders such as Paetongtarn Shinawatra explicitly promised, in the run up to the 2023 general election, not to join hands with military-aligned parties. Our survey found a median favourability rating of 1 for Prayut amongst Pheu Thai voters, which reflects their deep-seated opposition to the former military-backed government and what it stood for.
4. Progressive reformists are those who do not support either the establishment or Thaksin, most of whom would have voted for the MFP in 2023. Like populist reformists, progressive reformists share a deep frustration with Thailand’s conservative status quo. However, whereas populist reformists seek to alter the underlying distribution of power by replacing the entrenched elite with new political actors who champion their interests—without necessarily calling for sweeping changes to the role and status of the Thai monarchy—progressive reformists advocate for structural change. They see the role of the conservative establishment, the military’s entrenched role in governance, and the bureaucratic apparatus as fundamental obstacles to democratisation and believe that meaningful change requires dismantling these institutional foundations rather than simply redistributing economic and political power within the existing system. On the other hand, their opposition to Thaksin may stem from the belief that he has become part of the problem rather than the solution to Thailand’s vicious political cycle, or may align with traditional conservatives in their distrust of Thaksin due to past allegations of corruption and abuses of power.

TRADITIONAL CONSERVATIVES AND POPULIST REFORMISTS: QUO VADIS?

As political parties strategise to navigate the growing rift between elite alignment and voter attitudes, the first question to consider is whether voter rigidity has been overstated. Could voters be more open to switching across traditional pro-Thaksin and anti-Thaksin or pro-establishment and anti-establishment lines than our typology might imply? When asked in 2023 to select a second-choice party in the party list, voters almost uniformly indicated a party that was in the same anti-establishment or pro-establishment camp (see Table 2). Table 3 also demonstrates that relatively few voters crossed this boundary even amongst party switchers from 2019 to 2023, except in cases where voters moved from Palang Pracharath and the Democrats to Move Forward. However, more than half of Pheu Thai supporters in 2019 shifted to Move Forward in 2023, while far fewer moved in the opposite direction. This suggests that voters were more flexible in their stance on Thaksin than in crossing the pro-/anti-establishment divide, which was arguably more salient in the 2023 general election. Figure 2 summarises the flow of voters from 2019 to 2023 as captured by the survey.

      Figure 2. Flow of Survey Respondents from 2019 to 2023

Table 2. Most Common First Choice and Second Choice Party Combinations (Party List)

First Choice Party	Second Choice Party	Count
Move Forward	Pheu Thai	277
Pheu Thai	Move Forward	104
Move Forward	Thai Sang Thai	44
Move Forward	Seri Ruam Thai	37
United Thai Nation	Bhumjaithai	20
United Thai Nation	Democrat	18
United Thai Nation	Palang Pracharath	17

Table 3. Most Common Party Switching Combinations From 2019 to 2023

2019 Party Choice	2023 Party Choice (Party List)	Count
Future Forward	Move Forward	285
Pheu Thai	Move Forward	191
Palang Pracharath	United Thai Nation	97
Palang Pracharath	Move Forward	53
Democrat	Move Forward	44
Democrat	Democrat	25
Future Forward	Pheu Thai	21

It is important to note that this survey was conducted after the 2023 general election but before the grand compromise; without reliable survey data since then, it remains unclear how voter polarisation may have shifted in response. Nevertheless, we can outline the theoretical expectations that follow from these developments, assuming no new major events will emerge to overshadow or overturn the impact of the grand compromise. Previous research in political science suggests that when party elites take stances that exist far outside voters’ pre-existing frameworks of belief, they are much less likely to follow elite cues. If we take this as a starting point, the most stable voting bloc is likely to be the progressive reformists, given that the party that best represents their interest — the MFP — did not partake in the grand compromise or align itself in ways that might undermine its ideological commitments to its core constituents. Conversely, we expect that populist reformists and traditional conservatives who supported parties that deviated from their pre-election stances will be the most likely to waver on their party choices in the next election.

For populist reformists, the decision on whether or not to defect from Pheu Thai comes down to whether their distaste for the conservative establishment, which Pheu Thai had railed against for over a decade, outweighs their affection for Thaksin and their trust in his ability to advance key economic agendas or push for incremental reforms from within the system. They may stick with Pheu Thai if they perceive the grand compromise as a necessary and temporary strategy rather than a full and permanent capitulation. However, those who feel that Pheu Thai abandoned its core principles may see the compromise as a betrayal and shift their support toward parties such as the People’s Party (PP) or other anti-establishment alternatives — a move that would, in effect, mark their transition into the progressive reformist camp. If the shift from Pheu Thai supporters in 2019 to Move Forward in 2023 offers any indication, this movement is likely to grow even larger by 2027 as disillusionment with Pheu Thai’s compromises deepens and People’s Party solidifies its position as the primary vehicle for reformist voters.

If the shift from Pheu Thai supporters in 2019 to Move Forward in 2023 offers any indication, this movement is likely to grow even larger by 2027 as disillusionment with Pheu Thai’s compromises deepens and People’s Party solidifies its position as the primary vehicle for reformist voters.

For now, Pheu Thai appears to be pursuing three strategies. Firstly, it is consolidating the support of still-loyal populist reformists by putting Thaksin increasingly in the spotlight and attempting to make progress on their key populist pledges, especially the scaled-back 10,000 baht digital wallet policy. Secondly, the party has taken the lead on socially progressive issues where they share agreement with the PP, taking credit especially for the legalisation of same-sex marriage which received cross-party support. Third, it is prosecuting the case against the PP and distinguishing itself from their erstwhile ally with more clarity than ever before. Late last year, for example, Thaksin fired several broadsides against the PP, accusing its leaders of trying to pursue “too much structural change.”

A different calculus applies for the traditional conservatives: Does the fear of a PP government outweigh their hatred for Thaksin, who for decades was painted as a bogeyman? For many traditional conservatives, opposition to Thaksin and what he represents — corruption, cronyism, parliamentary dictatorship, and a slate of populist policies that show little regard for fiscal discipline — has been foundational to their political identity and a key driver of their partisanship. That their main parties have joined hands with a government now led by Thaksin’s daughter represents a stark contradiction to the very principles that motivated them to support these parties in the first place. The only saving grace, for some, is that this unholy, ideologically incompatible alliance has served—and can continue to serve — as a safeguard against the PP, which they likely view as an even greater threat to their cherished royal institution and conservative values. If this fear far outstrips their contempt for Thaksin, it is plausible that some traditional conservatives will choose not to punish their parties. Instead, they may rationalise their parties’ alliance with Pheu Thai as a pragmatic solution to uphold the conservative status quo in the face of significant political disruption — such as those brought about by the youth-led pro-democracy movements of 2020-2021 and the election victory of the MFP in 2023.

However, for those whose anti-Thaksin stance remains non-negotiable, this alliance crossed a line and will likely force them to seek new political alternatives. Whether this leads to vote-splitting among parties competing for the traditional conservative bloc or a shift toward parties in the progressive reformist bloc remains uncertain. It could also lead to the emergence of new parties seeking to fill the traditional conservative space that is currently largely unoccupied. This is especially true as the only major conservative party in opposition, Palang Pracharath, is headed by General Prawit Wongsuwan, whose enmity towards Thaksin is well known but is also inhibited by his frail image. Another pre-existing option is the Thai Pakdee party, an ultra-royalist political party headed by former Democrat MP Warong Dechgitvigrom, which has steadfastly upheld a strident anti-Thaksin line. However, the party’s dismal showing in 2023 (it failed to win a single seat) makes a move towards real viability a steep uphill battle.

CONCLUSION

To adopt Thai political parlance, the political parties have been able to “move on from Thaksin” (kao kham Thaksin) as a polarising issue. Yet voters have given little indication that their attitudes on Thaksin have shifted in similar ways, creating a mismatch between what several parties are offering and what voters want.

The grand compromise now hangs like a Damocles’ sword over the Paetongtarn government. While a Pheu Thai-led coalition would not have been possible without it, the unseemly deal-making has also produced an immense amount of uncertainty as it is difficult to forecast where two key voter blocs — the populist reformists and the traditional conservatives — will line up at the next election. In our previous piece on the realignment of Thailand’s party system in the wake of the grand compromise, we argued that Thailand’s parties have “[become] defined less by their stance on Thaksin and more by their positions on whether to uphold the political status quo or advocate for reform.” But here lies the issue facing Thailand’s political parties. To adopt Thai political parlance, the political parties have been able to “move on from Thaksin” (kao kham Thaksin) as a polarising issue. Yet voters have given little indication that their attitudes on Thaksin have shifted in similar ways, creating a mismatch between what several parties are offering and what voters want.

In some ways, parties are recognising and responding to the new challenges that they face. The People’s Party, for example, had pushed to make the role of Thaksin in Paetongtarn’s government an issue for discussion during the no-confidence debate that took place in March 2025. For the conservative parties that have thrown in their lot with Thaksin, however, the solution to how they position themselves in this divide is much less clear.

Although in our last piece we conceptualised Thai politics as being composed of a “strategic triangle” between the Thaksinites, conservatives, and progressives, the alliance between Thaksinites and conservatives threatens to poison the conservative brand in ways that could entirely alienate their most loyal voters. It remains unclear whether there can ever be a conservative counterweight to Move Forward if conservative voters are not able to accept Thaksin. There is as yet little indication of that.

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This is an adapted version of ISEAS Perspective 2025/25 published on 28 March 2025. The paper and its references can be accessed at this link.