Assessing Singapore’s Election Results

On May 3, Singaporeans went to the polls to elect a new government. As expected, the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) won a decisive victory, securing 65.57 percent of the national vote and winning 87 of the 97 seats in Parliament.

The result was not surprising: the PAP has enjoyed a hegemonic position in Singaporean politics since before independence in 1965, and has won every general election in the country, often by margins that would be considered unthinkable landslides anywhere else. It was nonetheless a significant result for Prime Minister Lawrence Wong in his first electoral test since taking the reins of power from Lee Hsien Loong last year.

At the last election in 2020, the PAP won 61.24 percent of the votes and 83 of the 93 seats in Parliament. But the election saw the PAP’s support fall by nearly 9 percentage points from the general election of 2015, prompting much soul-searching within the party.

This year, the PAP’s vote share rose by 4 points, and it prevailed in all of the most hotly contested constituencies, including the East Coast and West Coast-Jurong West Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs). (GRCs are constituencies in which teams of candidates, usually four or five, compete to be elected, unlike Single Member Constituencies, or SMCs, where an individual candidate is elected.) It also extended its margins in other important constituencies.

Wong also managed to buck the trend – if two data points can be said to constitute a trend – of PAP leadership transitions being followed by poor election results. This was the case after the country’s two previous leadership transitions, from Lee Kuan Yew to Goh Chok Tong in 1990 (when the PAP’s vote share declined by 2 points in the 1991 general election) and from Goh to Lee Hsien Loong in 2004 (when it fell by nearly 9 points in 2006). If Wong had seen the party’s support fall below even its disappointing return in 2020, he might have been “looking over his shoulder,” as Professor Michael D. Barr of Adelaide’s Flinders University told ABC News prior to the election.

As it happened, the election results served as a “resounding victory and an authoritative mandate” for Wong and the PAP, Eugene Tan of the Singapore Management University told Channel News Asia. “The transition to the 4G [fourth generation] leadership is now complete as the latest generation of leaders has secured a mandate that the 3G team would be proud of,” he said.

Conversely, the election was a letdown for supporters of Singapore’s scattering of opposition parties, including the Workers’ Party (WP), which have spent years attempting to erode the PAP’s majorities, and had some recent successes in doing so. At the 2020 election, the WP was among the main beneficiaries of the PAP’s losses, increasing its share of parliamentary seats to 10, and there was some optimism among PAP opponents that it might gain further ground this year.

At first glance, the WP’s returns on May 3 were far from disastrous. The party increased its share of the vote from 11.22 percent to 14.99 percent, held onto 10 seats in Parliament, and consolidated its hold over its three electorates: the Aljunied GRC, the Sengkang GRC, and the Hougang SMC. It also won 44 percent or more of the vote in all of the new constituencies it contested.

The party’s leader, Pritam Singh, said that the party had done “very commendably” given the PAP’s advantages and the current tense international environment. Due to its candidates’ strong performances in Jalan Kayu SMC and Tampines GRC, the party was also granted two Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) seats, which Singapore’s system reserves for the best-performing losers, bringing its total number of seats in Parliament to 12, a new high-water mark.

However, the WP’s gain came not at the expense of the PAP but of other opposition parties. The new Progress Singapore Party (PSP), which played an important role in the opposition surge in 2020, saw its vote share more than halve, dropping from 10.18 percent to just 4.89 percent, a result that party leader Leong Mun Wai described as “very shocking.” As a result, the PSP lost its two NCMP seats in Parliament, which it was awarded in 2020.

Meanwhile, the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), which came in fourth place at the last election, stagnated, with its share of the vote slipping from 4.45 to 3.72 percent. The party’s chairman, Paul Tambyah, lost ground in the Bukit Panjang SMC, which he had come close to winning in 2020. The SDP ended up being eclipsed by Red Dot United, another opposition party set up just before the last election.

Writing for the Online Citizen, Tan Tee Seng said that the result “has left many politically engaged citizens disillusioned and searching for answers.” In her newsletter “We, The Citizens,” journalist Kirsten Han wrote that many opposition supporters and pro-democracy advocates “were given a harsh reminder that many Singaporeans don’t think the same way (or, at the very least, don’t feel as strongly about it).”

What accounted for the result? It is true that many features of Singapore’s political system, including its tightly controlled press, permissive libel laws, and limited campaign period, favor the government and leave little room for impactful activism or dissent.  The electoral system, too, particularly the GRC system, arguably disadvantages opposition parties, whose presence in Parliament significantly lags behind their share of the vote.

Beyond these constants, some accused the WP of spreading itself too thinly, and failing to concentrate its best-known candidates in the constituencies where it stood the best chance of winning. However, the popular vote count tells a more straightforward story: of a “flight to safety” amid the uncertainties of the current moment in world politics.

This was certainly an issue that the PAP emphasized during its campaign, presenting voters with a simple question: can you risk changing governments in the midst of these looming economic and geopolitical challenges? In a Facebook post published shortly after the writ of election was issued on April 15, Prime Minister Wong said that Singaporeans needed to decide who should lead the nation into a world that “is becoming more uncertain, unsettled, and even unstable.”

“The global conditions that enabled Singapore’s success over the past decades may no longer hold,” he wrote. “That is why I have called this General Election. At this critical juncture, Singaporeans should decide on the team to lead our nation, and to chart our way forward together.”

After his victory, Wong said that the result would “put Singapore in a better position” to face the challenges to come.

This message seems to have resonated with many Singaporean voters. Or, to put it less charitably, “the weight of the PAP brand and fear of instability continue to dominate electoral decision-making, even when the party fields uninspiring or controversial figures,” as Tan Tee Seng argued.

This year’s result was also consistent with a pattern that has marked the past few general elections, which have seen the PAP’s fortunes fluctuate. Here, opposition parties might be able to take some solace. In the general election of 2011, the PAP’s share of the vote fell to just over 60 percent, and the WP’s representation in Parliament increased from two seats to six. At the 2015 election, the PAP surged back to around 70 percent of the vote, and the WP failed to win any new constituencies. Then, in 2020, the PAP’s vote fell to just over 61 percent and the WP won the Sengkang GRC, its second GRC, increasing its seats in Parliament to 10. According to this pattern, a PAP consolidation, especially in light of the above global uncertainties, was perhaps unsurprising.

Challenging a party as hegemonic as the PAP, in a system that places considerable constraints on opposition parties, is a task not of years but of decades. Indeed, past elections have shown that Singaporean voters are not allergic to voting for change, if the right alternatives present themselves. Supporters of the Singaporean opposition may be able to console themselves with the possibility that, with continued work and commitment, this zig-zagging pattern may work in their favor at the next general election.