Parallel Voting Behavior: From the Move Forward Party’s Victory in the General Election to the People’s Party’s Defeat in the Provincial Administrative Organization Election

Abstract

Academic literature on electoral behavior in Thailand has traditionally focused on national-level elections, largely through the influential “Two Democracies” thesis, which has generated sustained scholarly debate. Although studies of local elections have gradually increased, national and local electoral politics are still often examined separately. This separation limits our understanding of political dynamics that are closely interconnected across electoral levels, especially in recent years as political parties have become increasingly involved in local politics, most notably the Move Forward Party and its current successor, the People’s Party.

However, a comparison between the results of the 14 May 2023 general election and the Provincial Administrative Organization (PAO) chief executive elections held during 2024–2025 reveals a significant discrepancy. In several provinces where the Move Forward Party won all or most parliamentary seats, the party failed to achieve comparable success in local elections. This raises an important question of why electoral outcomes at the national and local levels diverge despite the relatively short time interval between the two electoral cycles.

This article aims to provide a comparative analysis of national and local election outcomes in Thailand. Drawing on a preliminary synthesis of existing Thai scholarship, it argues that electoral behavior differs between “national politics” and “local politics” because each level operates under distinct political dynamics and institutional conditions that shape voters’ decision-making in largely parallel ways. Voters tend to apply different sets of consideration across electoral levels: local elections are more likely to be determined by candidate-centered evaluations, whereas national elections are more strongly influenced by party-centered dynamics.

In addition, insights from the international literature suggest several mechanisms underlying these differences, including: (1) varying perceptions of the importance of elections at different levels, (2) differences in voters’ decision-making criteria, (3) variations in electoral systems and rules, and (4) the effects of political cycles and temporal context. The article seeks to encourage more in-depth, area-based research on this issue and calls for integrative studies employing the analytical framework proposed herein.