HSS: What Voters Want: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Thailand

Two of the most prominent forces in current Thai politics are the monarchy and protest movements. Yet we know very little about how these two forces shape electoral politics and influence voter behavior. In this paper we present some of the results from a unique survey experiment conducted in the days prior to the 2011 election. We seek to answer the following questions. Do appeals to the monarchy by candidates help their electoral chances? Is invoking the monarchy a winning electoral strategy? Does this differ by party, or by region? We also examine how candidates association with either the yellow or red shirt protests affects voter evaluation of those candidates.