Thai general election, 2005

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6 February 2005

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All 500 seats to the House of Representatives of Thailand
251 seats needed for a majority

	First party	Second party

Leader	Thaksin Shinawatra	Banyat Bantadtan
Party	Thai Rak Thai	Democrat
Last election	248 seats, 40.6%	128 seats, 26.6%
Seats won	375	96
Seat change	127	32
Popular vote	14,077,711	4,018,286
Percentage	56.4%	16.1%

Prime Minister before election

Thaksin Shinawatra
Thai Rak Thai

Prime Minister-designate

Thaksin Shinawatra
Thai Rak Thai

General elections were held in Thailand on 6 February 2005. With a turnout of 60.7 percent, the Thai Rak Thai Party (Thais Love Thais Party) of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra won a landslide victory. Out of 500 seats in the House of Representatives, Thaksin's party won 375 seats, with its former coalition partner, the Chart Thai Party (Thai Nation Party), taking 26 seats. The opposition Democrat Party of Thailand (Phak Prachatipat) won only 96 seats and the newly formed Mahachon Party took three seats.

Thaksin's party dominated most of Thailand's regions. In Bangkok it won 32 seats to the Democrats' four and Chart Thai's one. In the Central region it won 79 seats, to 10 for Chart Thai and eight for the Democrats. In the North, it won 70 seats to the Democrats' five. In the North-East (Isan) region, it won a massive 126 seats, to the Chart Thai's six, with two each going to the Democrats' the Mahachon Party. Only in the South was the landslide resisted. Democrats won 52 seats in their traditional stronghold, while Chart Thai and Thai Rak Thai won only one seat each. Of the 100 seats elected by proportional representation, Thais Love Thais appeared to be winning 67, to the Democrats' 25 and Chart Thai's eight.

Thaksin said he would now form a one-party administration, ending his uneasy coalition with Chart Thai. The Bangkok newspaper The Nation said that Thaksin "has apparently won the strongest popular re-endorsement in Thai political history and is set to be the most powerful prime minister ever elected to lead the Kingdom." Thaksin is the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Thailand to complete a full four-year term in office and the first to win an absolute majority in the House in a relatively free election.

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