Thailand’s progressive People’s Party came first in the last election and was leading opinion surveys before this weekend’s vote, but took a beating at the ballot box, raising questions over the popularity of its reform agenda.

Expectations were high ahead of Sunday’s poll but the party ended up a distant second, according to preliminary results, which show it losing nearly five million votes in the party list ballot compared with 2023.

The conservative Bhumjaithai party of incumbent prime minister Anutin Charnvirakul came first this time.

Analysts say Bhumjaithai’s nationalist tub-thumping won over voters in the wake of a border conflict with Cambodia last year, it was more effective on the ground and also built better local alliances.

But more fundamentally, the progressives’ electoral failure has disappointed backers hungry for change in the conservative kingdom.

‘I was hoping the People’s Party would win more votes,’ despondent supporter Naruedon Srikaew, 29, said at party headquarters on election night.

‘I’m still hopeful the country can reform itself,’ he added, ‘but I think the majority may feel they are not ready yet’.

Rounds of fighting with Cambodia in July and December killed scores of people on both sides and displaced more than a million.

Thai forces took control of several disputed areas late last year under Bhumjaithai’s Anutin, while the People’s Party campaigned on ending conscription and cutting the number of generals.

‘Anutin was able to leverage that sentiment, but People’s Party didn’t really represent or stand for nationalism,’ said Punchada Sirivunnabood, political science professor at Mahidol University.

‘They seemed to ignore this point,’ she added.

The party, then known as Move Forward, topped the last poll in 2023 on a platform of relaxing strict royal insult laws, pushing back military influence and breaking up powerful business monopolies.

That vote followed nine years under General Prayut Chan-o-cha, who took power in a coup, and came after unprecedented youth-led mass demonstrations calling for major political reforms.

That election ‘functioned as a de facto referendum between a pro-conservative status quo and a pro-reform alternative’, said political scientist Napon Jatusripitak from the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

At the time, Move Forward represented a ‘broad-based protest vote against the generals and the political order they represented’.

But it was never able to take power.

Military-appointed senators rejected its charismatic leader Pita Limjaroenrat as prime minister, and the constitutional court ruled the pledge to reform the lese-majeste law amounted to an attempt to overthrow the constitutional monarchy.

Pita was banned from politics for 10 years and the party was dissolved.

There was no ‘clear-cut pro-democracy versus pro-military divide’ this time, Napon said.

But conservative forces are deeply entrenched in the structures of power in Thailand, which has a long history of military coups and judicial bans on prime ministers and parties.

On Monday, Thailand’s anti-corruption body referred 44 current, former and newly elected People’s Party parliament members — including prime ministerial candidate Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut — to the Supreme Court on similar accusations that their campaign to reform the royal insult law was a breach of ethics.

They too could be banned from politics as a result.

Analysts say some reform-minded voters were angered by People’s Party decision during a political crisis last year to back Anutin as prime minister.

Natthaphong has said the party would not side with Bhumjaithai in coalition talks and will be part of the opposition.

But they could still make a comeback at the next election, said political analyst Paul Chambers.

‘Thai youths are fickle,’ he said. ‘People’s Party will learn its lessons and return in the next general election stronger than ever.’

And some supporters at party headquarters were undaunted by the results.

‘I’m disappointed, but we have to believe we can achieve our goals,’ said engineering student Korawich Phakthawee, 19.

‘Thai people are ready for change — we’ve been stuck in conservative politics for too long. It’s time.’