16% boost sees PAP convincingly win 2015 Singapore general election #updated

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Singapore’s People’s Action Party (PAP) has convincingly won the 2015 Singapore General Election securing at least 70 of the 89 seats up for grabs and throwing the political aspirations of opposition parties into disarray.

More than two million Singaporeans turned-out Friday to cast their vote in the country’s 12th general election, which saw nine political parties – People’s Action Party (PAP), Workers’ Party (WP), National Solidarity Party (NSP), Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), Reform Party (RP), Singaporeans First (SingFirst), Singapore Democratic Alliance (SDA), Singapore People’s Party (SPP), and the People’s Power Party (PPP) – take part.

For the first time in a Singapore general election the Singapore Elections Department (ELD) made public the results of ‘sample counts’ – 100 randomly selected ballot papers from each of the 163 counting centres islandwide and weighted to account for the number of votes cast at each polling station –  to ‘prevent speculation and misinformation’ before the official count was announced.

Trialled privately during the 2011 Singapore General Election, the sample count is said to be up to 95 per cent accurate, with a margin of error of just plus or minus four percentage points.

Eight hundred and thirty two polling stations opened for voters at 8am and by 5pm the ELD reported that some 2,085,676 people had cast their vote. Up to another 375,000 were expected to vote before polling stations closed at 8pm.

The first election since Singapore independence 50 years ago at which all parliament seats were contested at the same time, the 2015 Singapore General Election was also seen as a test of the leadership of caretake Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

At the 2011 Singapore General Election the PAP received just 60.1 per cent of the vote, a 20.19 per cent fall from the 75.3 per cent high it enjoyed at the 2001 Singapore General Election.

By 10.49pm it was clear the the island-state’s ruling party had been returned with sample counts indicating it had won more than the 45 seats it needed to rule in its own right.

At 12.03am the first of the concession announcements was made, posted by the SPP on its Facebook page.

Just 25 minutes later Prime Minister-elect Lee thanked supporters gathered at Toa Payoh Stadium. Speaking in English and Mandarin an obviously delighted Mr Lee thanked the Singapore electorate for their support vowing “tomorrow will be better than today; Singapore 100 will be better than Singapore 50.”

With a reported 71.71 per cent of valid votes Mr Lee, son of Singapore’s founding father and first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, goes into his third prime ministerial term comfortable in the knowledge that he will be able to step down from the post at a time of his own choosing; whether next year or in 10 years time

Singapore Workers Party gains 9% boost

Update: This post was updated at 9.45am September 12, 2015: In final 2015 Singapore General Election figures released by the Singapore Elections Department (ELD) the People’s Action Party (PAP) has won 83 of the 89 seats comprising the Singapore Parliament.

The PAPs final share of valid votes was 69.86 per cent, a 16.24 per cent increase over the 60.1 per cent of the popular vote it attracted in the 2011 Singapore General Election. In 2011 the PAP attracted 1,212,154 valid votes and its 2015 campaign saw this increase 30.08 per cent to 1,576,784.

The Opposition Workers Party (WP) which won 12.82 per cent of the popular vote in the 2011 Singapore General Election saw its total number of valid votes increase 8.97 per cent from 258,510 to 281,697.

While its share of total valid votes in the 2015 Singapore General Election dropped only marginally to 12.48 per cent, its share of the vote in the seats it contested fell from 46.58 per cent in the 2011 Singapore General Election to 39.75 per cent this year. A fall of 14.66 per cent. It will return to the next parliament with six seats, the same number it held going into the 2015 Singapore General Election.

The remaining seven parties and two independents who contested the 2015 Singapore General Election attracted a total of 398,535 or 17 .66 per cent of the popular vote. According to the ELD there were 47,315 rejected votes while 158,595 people failed to cast their vote. 

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*Electoral results do not include overseas voters.

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John Le Fevre

Thailand editor at AEC News Today

John is an Australian national with more than 40 years experience as a journalist, photographer, videographer, and copy editor.

He has spent extensive periods of time working in Africa and throughout Southeast Asia, with stints in the Middle East, the USA, and England.

He has covered major world events including Operation Desert Shield/ Storm, the 1991 pillage in Zaire, the 1994 Rwanda genocide, the 1999 East Timor independence unrest, the 2004 Asian tsunami, and the 2009, 2010, and 2014 Bangkok political protests.

In 1995 he was a Walkley Award finalist, the highest awards in Australian journalism, for his coverage of the 1995 Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) Ebola outbreak.

Prior to AEC News Today he was the deputy editor and Thailand and Greater Mekong Sub-region editor for The Establishment Post, predecessor of Asean Today.

In the mid-80s and early 90s he owned JLF Promotions, the largest above and below the line marketing and PR firm servicing the high-technology industry in Australia. It was sold in 1995.

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