Throughout 2013 and the early part of the following year, the political excitement resulting from each huge Red Shirt demonstration, both in Bangkok and beyond, in support of the elected Yingluck Shinawatra government, led many observers to believe that the Red Shirt movement was a strong democratic force, particularly in the Northeastern and Northern regions of Thailand. These observers believed that the movement was ready to oppose the return of an authoritarian regime by any means, and that the establishment of a government in exile or a division of the country to set up a Federation of Isan-Lanna States or Sahaphan rat isanlanna would be an option if a military coup were staged.

A study of peasants in rural Chiang Mai published by Andrew Walker in 2012, and drawing on fieldwork undertaken since 2005, presented a vivid picture of the transformation both of villager-farmers’ outlooks and of rural politics since Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai Party came to power in 2001. It documents many peasants’ dissatisfaction with the coup (Walker 2012, p. 209). In addition, two often-quoted works on the Red Shirts in Northeast and Northern Thailand, the first written in November 2013 and published in 2014 (Pinkaew 2013, pp. 51–60) and the second released in September 2014 (Keyes 2014, pp. 175–94), seem to confirm notions concerning the strong political activism of the Red Shirt villagers in these two regions. According to the two studies, especially Pinkaew's, villagers had risen up, had become politically active citizens and brave fighters for democracy, and were ready to protect democracy and to sacrifice their lives for the cause.