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Published on December 25, 2007

Losers by a mile in the 2001 and 2005 party-list battles - when the defunct Thai Rak Thai Party thrashed it - the Democrats have on this occasion mustered more than 14.08 million party-list votes, compared with 17.07 million for People Power, the reincarnation of Thai Rak Thai.

Sunday's results left analysts wondering where the votes could have come from, because the People Power polled about 4.5 million more votes than the Democrats in constituency balloting.

One possible reason could be that the Democrat name is established and well known, while other parties were "new" to voters.

Rural voters turned to candidates they knew in their constituencies, even if they were standing for unfamiliar parties.

They may then have found it comforting to cast their party-list vote for a familiar name.

Whatever the reason, this result takes some of the gloss off the People Power victory.

Thai Rak Thai polled 11.6 million party-list votes in 2001, compared with 7.6 million for the Democrats. In 2005, Thai Rak Thai won a massive 18.9 million votes, while the Democrats secured just 7.2 million.

The Nation