Local media polls had earlier said Bhumjaithai, which had been in government for just under three months before Anutin called the snap election to seek a fresh mandate, could end up with as many as 200 seats or more once counting was done.

If it does hit that number it will be nearly three times its previous seat share from the last poll in 2023 as Anutin successfully transforms what was once a regional power base into a nationwide political force.

Over the coming hours and days his party is likely to seek a coalition with smaller groups, and push it comfortably over the 251 majority threshold of the 500-seat lower house needed to govern.

The race to win the most seats had been expected to be a hard-fought duel between the reformist People’s Party and Bhumjaithai.

But Bhumjaithai appears to have capitalised on its status as the incumbent as well as a surge of nationalist sentiment curdled by a border conflict with Cambodia.

Anutin also forged pre-election alliances with Thailand’s dominant regional political dynasties, known as the baan yai, which appeared to have helped power Bhumjaithai back into office.

“If the unofficial results do come through, then it shows the electorate have seen the work of the government over the last two and a half months and responded to that,” Varawut Silpa-archa, the head of one of those families and a key Anutin lieutenant, told This Week in Asia, earlier in the count.

Thaksin’s Pheu Thai, meanwhile, was on track for its poorest result in its history.

But it may still be invited into the administration to support Anutin, who appears primed to lead Thailand’s fourth government in three years.

The results are a bitter blow to the hopes of those who want to see structural reform of Thailand’s turbulent politics and unequal economy.

“I’m heartbroken,” said Ploymas Yooying, 25, as an election party soured early in the night at the Bangkok headquarters of the People’s Party. “We came in so confident we would win and now I’m stunned. But next time it has to be ours … I’m still fighting with hope.”

The progressive youth-facing People’s Party, led by former tech executive Nattapong, 38, won the last election in 2023, in a previous incarnation of the Move Forward Party.

But it was blocked from taking power and then dissolved – its leaders banned – for an attempt to reform the royal defamation law that shields the Thai monarchy from scrutiny.

The courts and other unelected bodies – agencies with a long record of giving conservative interests a leg up into power even after they have lost elections – may also have their say this time.

A concurrent vote is being held on reforming a 2017 military-scripted constitution, which critics say is to blame for Thailand’s ulcerous decay of the last decade by embedding the powers of those courts and agencies to overturn the democratic mandate.

Results on whether to hold the referendum are pending.

Conservative custodians

Bhumjaithai was always going to be a formidable opponent, experts said, with the wave of nationalism sweeping parts of the country – in particular border areas – since the conflict with Cambodia that dragged through the second half of last year.

The party is seen as the custodian of conservative interests, including the unassailable place of the monarchy at the apex of Thai power.

It also hails its credentials as the defender of Thai territorial integrity – a major election issue especially among older voters with last year’s border clashes still front of mind.

Led by Anutin, a 59-year-old heir to a construction empire, the party says it has the remedy for the country’s ailing economy, which is growing slower (1.8 per cent to 2 per cent at best this year) than its competitors Indonesia and Vietnam.

Anutin had vowed to make sure Thailand “is no more the sick man of Asia” in his final pitch to the public, a reference to an economic decay that has been a decade in the making.

“We’ve done everything we could, but we can’t force the hearts of the public,” Anutin told reporters after casting his ballot in Buriram.

He later said he hoped any bitterness between parties during the “competition” of the campaign phase could be put aside in the national interest after the polls.

But to his critics, Anutin represents more of the same.

He has been an ever-present face in government during Thailand’s recent decline, serving as a minister under Prayuth Chan-ocha, the ex-general who ruled Thailand between a 2014 coup and the 2023 election.

Bhumjaithai swept constituencies in the poor, populous northeast where 133 seats were contested, while Bangkok remained in the control of the People’s Party, reflecting Thailand’s political dividing lines.

The result is also a hammer blow to Pheu Thai, which lost much of its northeastern stronghold to Bhumjaithai.

But few ever rule out party patriarch Thaksin, the influential tycoon who has a history of unlikely comebacks and deals that break political assumptions.

He is currently in jail, with his sister Yingluck, Thailand’s first female prime minister, in self-exile overseas since 2014, and his daughter Paetongtarn – sacked from office in August last year over her handling of the Cambodia border dispute – also facing potential legal action.

Experts say legal woes could decide how Thaksin plays his hand post-election from the prison cell.

His nephew Yodchanan Wongsawat, an academic who is a political newcomer, was carrying the family’s banner into the election.

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

“I am hungry to make a real change in the country,” he told This Week in Asia. “Every day I get power from the people, and I am ready to serve them.”

Anutin Charnvirakul – Bhumjaithai Party

Under his father’s Bhumjaithai Party banner and the protective wing of the influential politician Newin Chidchob, Anutin has served as a minister in every government since 2019. His breakout policy was cannabis liberalisation and since then he has climbed the ladder to assume the prime minister’s post late last year, after the government of Paetongtarn Shinawatra collapsed.

Seen as the steward of royalist, conservative interests, he has gathered behind him some of the country’s biggest political families. That backing fuels Anutin’s election pitch as a strong, decisive manager to cut through political chaos and reset a creaking economy.

Bhumjaithai has promised major stimulus into the economy, rural poor uplift schemes and to kick-start stalled megaprojects. Crucially, it has benefited from surging nationalist sentiment triggered by Thailand’s border war with Cambodia that rumbled through the second half of 2025.

Anutin shares his downtime exploits across social media, flying private jets, cooking, playing saxophone and snooker. But he is also known for the occasional gaffe or brusque handling of the media that has landed him in trouble.

Averring sit-down interviews and televised debates so far, his highly capable deputies Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow and commerce chief Suphajee Suthumpun do much of the frontline public engagement.

Yodchanan Wongsawat – Pheu Thai party

Handed the gargantuan task of restoring the fortunes of the Pheu Thai party, academic Yodchanan is yet another family member to take charge of the Shinawatra clan’s political vehicle. The 46-year-old is nephew to Thaksin, the party patriarch, through his mother’s side. His father was briefly prime minister before falling afoul of the courts.

But the family business comes with a price. Thaksin is in jail, his younger sister Yingluck in self-exile, and Yodchanan’s cousin Paetongtarn was booted from office.

Well liked despite being unknown to much of the public until a few months ago, Ajarn Shane (professor Shane), as he is known, promises populist increases to incomes of the poor and to even mint nine (baht) millionaires a day from a lottery of people who start filing taxes.

Experts say he has taken to campaigning well given his newcomer status to frontline politics. He represents a strong political brand, which has the loyalty of sections of the rural poor.

But Pheu Thai has also been diminished by two years of failed government, including the ill-fated phone call by Paetongtarn to Cambodia’s Hun Sen. Yodchanan’s challenge is to buck forecasts pegging Pheu Thai back in third in the election, with its lowest vote share since Thaksin founded a family party in 2001.

Abhisit Vejjajiva – Democrat Party

Known to his legion of fans by his English nickname “Mark”, the former prime minister has never been elected to the top job by the public despite being at the heart of Thailand’s political breakdown over the last two decades. He was appointed prime minister in 2008 after Yodchanan’s father was dismissed by the interventionist courts.

The Democrat Party he has returned to lead is Thailand’s oldest. In the few months since Abhisit’s October comeback, he appears to have restored its flagging fortunes. British-born Abhisit, who was educated at Eton and Oxford University, still pulls a crowd wherever he goes, mainly among slightly older southern conservatives and Bangkokians, areas the party is targeting to scoop up seats.

But he is still loathed by some Pheu Thai supporters and other pro-democrats for leading the government during a bloody crackdown on the Shinawatra-linked red-shirt movement in Bangkok.

A strong communicator, Abhisit’s campaign has been energetic and focused on clean politics, insisting his party will not ally post-polls with anyone associated with the grey money that washes around Thailand. His party is eyeing 30 to 50 seats, enough to become key to coalition conversations after the polls.

The rest …

From the eccentric to the nefarious, there is a cast of others seeking seats that may give them cabinet posts – or even the unlikely run at the top job. The most influential is Thammanat Prompao, a kingmaking cabinet minister with a fearsome reputation, who has parried multiple efforts to disqualify him over news reports he was jailed in Australia for trafficking heroin in the 1990s – a substance he says was in fact just powder.

Meanwhile, Motkhonkit Suksintharanon, an independent for the New Alternative Party, has hogged headlines with bizarre policy suggestions for Thailand to buy Manchester United football club, as well as 10 nuclear warheads to defend itself in difficult times.