The regime tilted the playing field to its advantage, but it didn’t matter. Thailand’s opposition won with creativity, shrewd tactics, and a strategy that united the people.

By Srdja Popovic and Steve Parks

May 2023

For the most ardent defenders of global democracy, recent days seems a disappointment: In Turkey’s elections on May 14—despite optimistic polling and the opposition’s solid, united campaign—the ruling party kept its parliamentary majority, and the increasingly autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, beat the opposition candidate by five percentage points. He is likely to prevail in the May 28 runoff.

But the overwhelming media focus on Turkey obscured a big win for democracy on the other side of the world. On the same day Turks went to the polls, Thailand’s opposition scored a thunderous success in that country’s election. The Thai opposition exceeded the most optimistic predictions, with the progressive Move Forward party winning an estimated 151 of the 500 seats in parliament, and another opposition party, Peu Thai, capturing 141 seats. The conservative ruling incumbent, United Thai Nation Party, meanwhile, won only 36 seats. For Thailand’s military junta, it was a colossal and unexpected loss.

So, as we read dozens of articles about what went wrong in Turkey, it is worth asking: How did the Thai opposition prevail on an equally tilted electoral field? What tactics did they deploy, and what lessons might they teach those resisting autocracy around the world?