Reeling off a litany of election irregularities, Thaksin said the military regime "clearly is afraid" and its proxy party Palang Pracharath (PPRP) would lead a "very unstable government" if it doesn't have a majority in the lower house of parliament.
"I hope this election is a good step forward for the country after being hindered by political conflict", said Veerawat Srisingh, a 21-year-old worker at a logistics company said after casting his vote in a suburb of Bangkok.
Phalang Pracharat had almost half a million more votes than Pheu Thai, despite the track record of Mr Thaksin whose parties have won every vote since 2001, drawing on loyalty from the rural and urban poor.
With senate votes in hand, the party needs just 126 lower house seats to secure a parliamentary majority.
Despite that, analysts had not expected the army-linked Phalang Pracharat party to win the popular vote, given mounting anger at junta rule and the enduring popularity of Pheu Thai - the party of ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra.
Eighty political parties are vying for the 500 seats in the House of Representatives, which comprises 350 elected from constituencies and another 150 from a party-list system.
Two competing political parties have raised doubts about the results, citing irregularities. Pheu Thai came in second with 7.23 million votes.
His complaints included inconsistent and delayed results from the Election Commission, ballot numbers exceeding voters in some areas, turnouts twice the number of registered voters, and a suspiciously large number of voided ballots.
He sidestepped questions over wildly inaccurate poll returns reported late Sunday in several constituencies, as down to "human error".
A coordinator for Thailand-based election monitor We Watch said that voter education was "really insufficient" for the first election in eight years.
His affiliated parties have won every Thai election since 2001, drawing on loyalty from rural and urban poor.
"In 2014, they took power with the barrel of a gun, by a coup", she said.
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The movie is releasing on April 5, a few days before the commencement of the Lok Sabha elections in India. Ssingh was quoted by news agency PTI, "I did not get any call from him and so I also did not call him.
But preliminary figures showed Phalang Pracharat - with 2014 coup leader Prayut Chan-O-Cha as its candidate for prime minister - ahead in the popular vote.
Pheu Thai, which was ousted from power in 2014 and is allied with the exiled Thai leader Thaksin Shinawatra, fell well short of the landslide victory that its supporters had hoped for. "This is making people skeptical of the election results", said party spokeswoman Pannika Wanich.
While the Election Commission said some results would be ready in the coming hours, exact tallies were not due to be finalised until Friday.
Former premier Abhisit Vejjajiva stepped down as leader of the Democrat Party on Sunday after it was projected that it won 33 seats.
The Election Commission unexpectedly postponed the release of fuller results until Monday afternoon, including the number of lower house seats won by each party. But they overreached themselves by nominating the Thai king's sister as their candidate for prime minister, and instead of gaining some royal luster, found themselves disgraced and dissolved.
Some voters, speaking on the condition of partial anonymity because criticism of the Thai monarchy is a crime punishable by jail time, rejected the paternalistic undertones of the message and said they wanted to make their own choices.
"Everyone knows in Thailand, everyone global that observed the election in Thailand, knows that (there) is irregularities", he told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in an interview on Monday in Hong Kong.
But no matter how the numbers play out, coup leader Prayut's party will benefit from a military-appointed 250-member Senate.
The election commission, meanwhile, blamed "human error" for the chaotic roll out of results, and alleged that its servers had suffered from unspecified hacking attacks.
The vote is taking place under a military-backed constitution, Thailand's 20th.
The party's is in jeopardy because it faces legal challenges from the campaign period, but its strong performance is disconcerting for the junta.
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