A Victory for Nationalism or Coordination?

By Joel Sawat Selway

Image generated by ChatGPT

In the two days since Thailand’s 2026 General Election, much of the international media converged on a single explanation for Anutin Charnvirakul’s victory. From Reuters to the Washington Post, headlines declared that nationalism had carried the Bhumjaithai Party to power.

“Thailand’s PM Anutin staked his election on nationalism and won” (Reuters)

“Thailand's Anutin rides wave of nationalism to election victory” (Agence France Presse)

Slightly less sensational, but nevertheless provocative were the claims that the country was moving in a conservative direction.

“Thailand's ruling Bhumjaithai party tops election that marks a conservative comeback” (Associated Press)

“Bhumjaithai Party's election victory signals a conservative shift in Thailand's politics” (Washington Post)

While conservatism and nationalism capture the tone of BJT’s campaign, does it also reflect the logic of the result? Winning an election after invoking nationalism is not the same as winning because of it, and Thailand’s 2026 vote offers strong evidence that nationalist appeals did not structure voter behavior to the extent these reports imply.

Far from delivering a nationalist mandate, the election produced weak turnout, fragmented national support, and inconsistent voting patterns across party list and constituency outcomes.

The Nationalism Claim

Nationalism was certainly part of BJT’s campaign rhetoric. Anutin Charnvirakul, the incumbent Prime Minister, ushered Thailand through a border conflict with Cambodia, the most serious exchange of fire between the two countries for decades. This led to Anutin taking decisive action, even defying a ceasefire negotiated hastily by President Trump. BJT used nationalist rhetoric at rallies and in speeches with Anutin once even defending his parties’ stance: “"Those who speak against the wave of nationalism—are they even Thai? Do they care more about other countries than Thailand? If they think this way, how can they volunteer to work for the nation?”

The stronger claim—that nationalism structured vote choice—doesn’t survive even basic empirical checks.

Data Point 1. Voter Turnout

Riding a wave of nationalism evokes images of voters turning up to the polls in large numbers. We know already, however, that voter turnout was the lowest it has been in over two decades, just 65.22% compared to 75.22% in 2023. The previous low in the 21^st century was 69.94% in the 2001 elections. From a turnout perspective, this was hardly a wave.

Was there a difference in turnout between BJT supporters and the losing parties? The closest approximations we have are to compare voter turnout in constituencies won by each party. On this measure, PP-winning constituencies actually had the highest turnout at 67.00%. BJT-winning constituencies along with KT-winning constituencies were right around the average of 65%. PT’s was markedly lower at 60.49%, while the DP’s was markedly higher at 71.47%.

Nationalist mobilization is typically associated with heightened participation and emotional polarization; neither is evident in these figures.

Data Point 2. Party List Vote Share

While this second data point is widely reported, and thus hardly surprising, a party riding a wave of nationalism should not be expected to come second on the party list tier. BJT won 18.08% of the party list vote compared to PP’s 29.69%. That’s an 11.61% point difference. While ticket-splitting exists, large systematic and natinwide drops between tiers are difficult to reconcile with claims of national ideological consolidation. If nationalism is a national phenomenon, then this result seems like a resounding defeat for nationalism.

But it gets worse. BJT won 174 constituencies, or 43.5% of the 400 constituency seats. They won 29.93% of votes on the constituency tier. That’s impressive. But these numbers represent the support of BJT’s local candidates. This support decreased by 11.85 percentage points moving from the constituency tier to the party list tier. Moreover, when calculated at the constituency level, BJT placed first in just 60 constituencies nationwide on the party list tier, a 114 seat difference! In contrast, PP won 204 seats, a majority at 51%. Even Pheu Thai won more constituencies by this measure, 74 to BJT’s 60 (though PT got just 15.63% of the party list tier vote). And DP wasn’t far behind BJT, winning 44 constituencies in the South.

In short, if the party list vote is a measure of support for national leaders, policies, and campaign rhetoric, BJT’s victory does not represent a victory for nationalism.

An Alternative Story: Coordination amongst Conservative Parties

At the same time the media has been reporting stories of a victory for nationalism, they have also had to deal with the difference in predictions based on polling numbers. I reference some in my previous article, but the most-common range for BJT was 140-150. Even those predictions contradicted the poll numbers, but the experts explained that by referencing BJT’s “encircling strategy”, which entailed “control over the Ministry of Interior and the accumulation of "local family" power bases nationwide.”

Wait, I though nationalism won BJT the election? This sounds like a different dynamic. And indeed, BJT’s firm victory on the constituency tier confirms this. BJT beat PP by 6.39% on the constituency tier. And because Thailand has a First-Past-the-Post system, it is not unusual for 29.93% of the vote to translate into 43.5% of seats.

However, there is another data point that suggests another dynamic was involved in BJT’s victory: pre-electoral coordination between BJT and another conservative party, Kla Tham (KT). Pre-electoral coordination is when there is a formal or informal agreement for two parties of a similar ideological persuasion to strategically not compete against each other. Usually they look at which of the two are more popular in a constituency and then the other party will either not field a candidate at all or field a weak candidate. More importantly, they instruct their voters to vote for the other party.

Data Point 3. Average Margin

Because pre-electoral coordination is rarely documented publicly, we must rely on indirect indicators. One such indicator is the difference between ideologically-aligned parties in constituencies where one dominates. We call this difference the margin, and we average it across all constituencies that a party wins. Hence, the average margin.

Average Margins among Pro-Military Parties

In 2026, when BJT was the winner in a constituency, its average margin to KT was 45.19%--that means KT's vote share was 45.19% lower, on average, than BJT's. BJT's average margin to DP, another conservative party, was even higher at 48.53%. When KT was the winner, its average margin to BJT was 32.81% and 40.92% to DP (mean of 36.87%). Finally, when DP won its margin to BJT was 21.65% and 37.67% to KT (mean 29.66%).

To put this in perspective, let’s compare to average margins in the 2023 elections: BJT’s average margins to PPRP and UTN were 38.83% and 39.34% respectively. This is ~7-8% less than in 2026, indicating coordination has indeed increased; likewise PPRP’s and UTN’s average margins to other conservative parties was lower than the second- and third-placed conservative parties in 2026: 33.76% and 29.5%, respectively.

Average Margins among Anti-Military Parties

There is weaker evidence of coordination amongst anti-military parties in both 2023 and 2026. In fact, I wrote an article on what would have happened in 2023 had PT and PP (then MFP) coordinated (spoiler: they could have won 53 more seats between them, almost reaching a majority of the joint House and Senate).

PP’s average margin to PT was 27.91% in 2026 compared to just 19.41% in 2023. PT’s average margin to PP was 25.16 %in 2026 compared to just 21.85% in 2023. In short, both ideological camps seem to be coordinating more in 2026, but the level of coordination is still much lower amongst the anti-military parties.

In sum, large margins between ideologically similar parties are consistent with coordination or selective non-competition rather than intense ideological sorting. Pro-military parties had much larger average margins than anti-military parties (37.8% to 26.5%), which suggests higher coordination.

Discussion: What does “Coordination” really mean?

I’ve used the term coordination, but it is unclear if leaders from KT and BJT sat down and came to such an agreement. It is not impossible, but I can find no public evidence of this to date.

A weaker version of such explicit agreements might be called “strategic targeting”. When KT realizes that it cannot really beat BJT in a constituency it simply puts in little effort. Better to spend resources in constituencies where you actually stand a chance. To illustrate, consider the constituency of KT leader Thammanat Phromphao. He won his constituency of Phayao 1 with 48,578 more votes than the second-placed PP candidate (~79,000 total votes in the constituency). Why would BJT bother trying to recruit anybody in this district? Instead, they would haveselectively targeted other constituencies where KT is not so strong.

In the Upper North, the data strongly suggest that BJT made a collective decision to not put in very much effort at all, averaging just 9782 votes (12.5%). Similarly, KT averaged just 4,441 votes (5.7%) in Lower Isan, the home region of BJT leader Anutin Charnvirakul.

Conclusion: Motivation for Coordination

I am not saying nationalism played no role. I do not have data to support that—I would need individual survey responses. However, my hunch is that it motivated voters who were already predisposed for BJT in the first place. My point is two-fold: first, nationalism is not the only thing that mattered and likely not the most important thing; and second, coordination does not require ideological motivation at all—and where the two clashed, local dynamics were clearly more important.

I conclude by asking: “Why did both pro-military parties engage in more selective targeting in 2026?” Here, I speculate, but based on a solid and well-supported theory in political science. Allen Hicken (the other co-founder of ThaiDataPoints) in his book Building Party Systems in Developing Democracies (Cambridge University Press, 2009) argues that when non-democratic actors prevent the winners of elections from controlling the reins of government, the incentives to build big national parties and coordinate across factions throughout the country fades. 2019 and 2023 were such elections. The 2017 constitution mandated the PM be chosen by a joint sitting of the House and Senate (fully appointed by the military), requiring 376 out of 500 House seats to be won if the winning party wanted to select the Prime Minister unchallenged. In 2026, they took that requirement away. Now 251 seats in parliament would suffice to choose the Prime Minister, a much easier task, and one that BJT and KT seem to have achieved.

Rather than signaling a nationalist mandate, the 2026 election reflects a shift in institutional incentives that rewarded coordinated aggregation over ideological mobilization. If anything “won” this election, it was strategic targeting under new rules—not a wave of nationalist enthusiasm.