Singapore’s 2015 General Election is over but in its wake, many are still trying to figure out the election’s big surprise – the PAP’s comeback at the ballot box. The party that has governed Singapore since 1959 benefited from a 9.8% swing from 2011, bringing its popular vote share to nearly 70%. They secured 83 out of 89 seats in Parliament, against an opposition that was thought to be on the rise. Commentators have described the election result in different ways. It has been seen as a decisive mandate that has reinforced the country’s status as a “bastion of stability for foreign investment in a region of growing instability”. Yet, it also demonstrates that Singaporeans are comfortable with the status quo, and “do not generally require diversity of views for its own sake”, among other things.
IPS is conducting a series of surveys to better understand the outcome of the September 11 polls. Ahead of the findings, which will be released later in the year, IPS Senior Research Fellows Dr Gillian Koh, Mr Manu Bhaskaran and Mr Tan Tarn How will offer their analysis on the election outcome, and speculate why the pundits – and to an extent, all the parties – got their predictions wrong. How did the election campaign play out on new and social media, and why did sentiment expressed there figure so little in the election outcome? What impact do the results have on the economy and what expectations are there of the new Cabinet? How will governance continue to evolve in the next five years?
This talk will be chaired by IPS Director, Mr Janadas Devan.
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