A total of 4,781 constituency candidates and 1,898 party-list candidates have applied to contest the May 14 election nationwide, with 63 prime ministerial candidates, the Election Commission (EC) said on Saturday.
The contenders represent a total of 70 political parties, the EC said as it released the results of candidate registration that took place from Monday to Friday.
Seventy parties have registered constituency candidates, 67 have registered list candidates and 43 have proposed prime ministerial candidates, said the EC.
Bangkok had the highest number of constituency candidates at 498 in 33 constituencies.
Voters on May 14 will be choosing 400 constituency members for the House of Representatives and voting for the party of their choice on a second ballot. A total of 100 list MPs will be chosen, under a revised calculation method that reduces the chances of single-member microparty representation, as was seen in 2019.
In the March 2019 election, nine parties managed to get at least one constituency MP elected. List MPs were drawn from 25 parties, 12 of which had just one member.
This year, only about 10 to 12 parties are expected to succeed in electing a member to the House via either the constituency or the list route.
