Shinawatra's party in line for victory in Thai elections

Exit polls in Thailand are showing the party allied to ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has won an absolute majority in the fractious country’s tense election.

Two major polling organisations gave Yingluck Shinawatra’s Pheu Thai party far more than the 250 of 500 seats it would need to form the next government. Yingluck is Thaksin’s sister.

The Suan Dusit university poll gave Yingluck’s party 313 seats, compared to 152 for the ruling Democrat party of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. Another poll by Bangkok’s ABAC university gave Yingluck 299 seats compared to 132 for the Democrats.

Preliminary results from the Election Commission are expected later today.

The poll comes five tumultuous years after a military coup divided the South east Asian kingdom.

Many people fear the ballot, the first since last year’s anti-government demonstrations brought Bangkok to its knees, could trigger a new era of upheaval if the results are not accepted by rival protesters or the coup-prone army.

Television stations reported long queues at polling stations nationwide as registered voters chose a new 500-member parliament.

Security was tight, with around 170,000 police deployed nationwide to protect booths, but no incidents of violence were immediately reported.

Thaksin’s overthrow in 2006 set the nation on a downward spiral from which it is still struggling to recover.

Now living in Dubai to escape a two-year prison sentence on graft charges, Thaksin’s ascent to power in 2001 touched off a societal schism between this South east Asian nation’s haves and have-nots – between the marginalised rural poor who hailed his populism and an elite establishment that sees him as a corrupt, autocratic threat to the monarchy and the status quo.