Who votes for virtue? Religion and party choice in Thailand’s 2019 election

Abstract

Does religion shape political competition in Thailand? Despite the prominence of religiously inflected rhetoric of good and evil in contemporary political contestation, existing research suggests that it does not. This article challenges this conventional wisdom. Survey data collected in connection with Thailand’s 2019 general election, which marked a transition from direct military rule to a hybrid regime, allow us to examine the political relevance of religious belonging, belief, and behaviour. Our analysis finds evidence for the political salience of a secular/religious cleavage: voters who self-identified as more religious were more inclined to support the main pro-military party Palang Pracharath and its closest allies, whilst more secularised voters tended to support anti-military parties in general and the Future Forward Party in particular. We also find that Thailand’s religious minorities were politically divided: Muslims and Protestants backed the pro-military parties whilst Catholics opposed them. Our analysis underscores the need for more attention to the role of religious cleavages in Thai political contention.

The Ambiguous Allure of Ashoka: Buddhist Kingship as Precedent, Potentiality, and Pitfall for Covenantal Pluralism in Thailand

“…In light of this it is perhaps not entirely surprising if members of religious minorities regard the Buddhist monarch, the royalist military, and the political parties most closely aligned with them, as protection against the prospect of a "tyranny" of the Buddhist majority. Preliminary analysis of survey data collected in connection with the 2019 election indicates that the ultra-royalist and military-backed Palang Pracharath Party won especially strong backing from Muslim and Protestant voters (Larsson and Stithorn 2021).…”