Celia Hatton

If the People's Party wins, everyone expects the same to happen again.

Jonathan Head has more.

In the north-eastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima, an excited crowd cheers a row of candidates from the People's Party.

Centre stage is a slightly gawky young man being mobbed by the crowd.

This is Natapong Rungpanyawat, who, at just 38 years old, is the most popular candidate to be the next Prime Minister of Thailand.

We're leaving the old politics behind, he says.

We need a politics of hope.

If the polls are to be believed, the People's Party, with its promises of sweeping reform, will win the most seats in this election.

But we have been here before.

That was Peter Limcher-Rehnrath, leader of what was then called the Move Forward Party, speaking after their shock election victory three years ago.

Despite winning more seats than any other party, Move Forward was blocked from forming a government and eventually dissolved, its leaders banned from politics because they had dared to suggest amending the draconian royal defamation law under which hundreds of young activists had been jailed.

So today the party's candidates, like Mackie, focus on more bread-and-butter issues.

These are nearly all economic.

Arm is 28 and about to lose his job.

The printer factory where he works is closing down, a pattern repeated across Thailand these days as manufacturing moves to lower-cost locations like Vietnam.

I only have basic education, he told us.

His prospects of finding another job are bleak.

The status quo is very powerful in Thailand and resistant to change.

This is Prime Minister Anutin Chawirakun at a rally of his Thai pride party.

He's the current standard-bearer for conservative Thais and hopes to beat the People's Party with a mix of patriotism and populist giveaways.