Multi-seat vs. single-seat constituencies

One of the amendments under discussion for the 2007 constitution concerns the constituencies for the national lower house election. With this constitution, the multi-seat constituencies in use before 1997 were introduced again. Now the smaller parties in parliament started the move to amend article 190 which deals with the election system to return to the single-seated constituencies in use before the coup. The leading Democratic party however already denied any amendments - probably because they expect to be more successful in the multi-seated constituencies. For a few analysis on this issue see e.g. Thai Politics or Bangkok Pundit, also compare a 2007 article in the Nation.

But away from the current political battles, I found an interesting table in the article "From Phitsanulok to Parliament: Multiple Parties in Pre-1977 Thailand" by Allan D. Hicken, found in the 2001 KPI yearbook, showing the number of constituencies with the different weights. I have added the constituencies of 2007 to the table.

	1986	1988	19921	1995	1996>	2007
Total Constituencies	138	142	142	155	156	156
Total Seats	347	357	360	391	393	4802
3-seat Constituencies	80	82	85	88	88	92
2-seat Constituencies	49	51	48	60	61	60
1-seat Constituencies	9	9	9	7	7	4

¹ two elections, one in March and one in September, using the same constituency layout.
² 80 seas filled from regional party lists, not directly elected in constituency.