Monday 20 June 2011

Pheu ThaI still leading

Opinion polls, which Democrat Party senior officials were reluctant to believe, continue to tip the Pheu Thai Party as the frontrunner in the July 3 election - the latest indicating that Pheu Thai would win about half (51.5 per cent) of the vote for party-list candidates.

The Suan Dusit Poll, released yesterday, showed that a majority of 102,994 people interviewed across the country would vote for Pheu Thai and 34 per cent for the ruling Democrat Party.

The poll was conducted from June 4 until Saturday June 18 in all the 375 constituencies.

It found that only 2.4 per cent of the respondents have yet to decide on which party to vote for, while 1.4 per cent said they would cast a ballot on election day but would vote for nobody.

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According to the survey, Pheu Thai would get 64 seats for its party-list while the Democrats would get 43 seats. Bhum Jai Thai is third, but it would get only four seats on the party-list. The election on July 3 will be for 500 seats of the House of Representatives, of which 375 represent constituencies while 125 come from the proportion of votes for the party.

The Suan Dusit Poll did not conduct the survey for constituency candidates.

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Democrat secretary-general Suthep Thaugsuban said he did not pay attention to opinion polls and they did not disturb him or his party.

"I will not argue with the polls and people should not pay much attention to them," he said. "Let us see the real result of the election on the day and we will know which poll is more accurate."

Suthep said he was still confident the poll did not reflect the real vote for the Democrats.

Another survey conducted on June 13 by the National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA) with a sampling of 1,247 indicated the same trend as the Suan Dusit poll.

It suggested Pheu Thai would win 30.5 per cent while the Democrats would get 17.4 per cent in the entire country.

Both surveys indicated Pheu Thai had support from many regions, except the South, a traditional Democrat stronghold. Pheu Thai got only some 10 per cent of vote in the South, according to Suan Dusit and NIDA polls.

In Bangkok, where many academics have tipped the urban middle class will support the Democrats, the polls indicated Pheu Thai would get significant support from voters.

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