In Singapore’s Election, Success Is Less About Who Wins Than By How Much

The ruling People’s Action Party has dominated the city-state for six decades

By Jin WuChristopher UdemansPhilip Heijmans April 29, 2025

There’s a cliché in Singapore politics that has served the People’s Action Party (PAP) well over six decades of unbroken rule: in times of crisis, voters seek stability. But while few doubt that the ruling party’s winning streak will continue, it’s the margin of victory that Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and the PAP will be judged against.

Wong — the city-state’s fourth leader in 60 years — is seeking a resounding mandate to lead trade-dependent Singapore into a volatile new world when voters go to the polls on May 3. A total of 97 seats are up for grabs, though five are uncontested, and voting is mandatory.

Yet even victories that appear overwhelming to outsiders — the PAP won 89% of the parliamentary seats in 2020 — can be seen as a rebuke internally, reverberating into public policy. The 2020 election sparked soul-searching when the party’s share of the popular vote fell to about 61%, an almost-historic low.

To reinforce its support after that performance, which came in the middle of the Covid pandemic, the PAP tightened entry requirements on some foreign workers, eased access to public housing for younger citizens and repealed a long-standing law barring sex between men. But the party stood by plans to raise the sales tax, twice.

What 2020 made clear is that the PAP’s share of the national vote has been trending downward for more than two decades, though it did rebound a bit in 2015. And the number of “walkovers,” or districts where the ruling party runs uncontested, has been in sharp decline as opposition groups seek to be more competitive nationally. One focus this year will be on whether the overall downward drift in the share of votes for the PAP continues.

“This will be a landmark general election for the PAP,” said Inderjit Singh, a former ruling party lawmaker. Falling below 60% would “be a signal that the PAP needs to do things differently.”

Based on recent election history, the Workers’ Party may benefit the most if the PAP falls short. Their proposals include making public housing more accessible to young, single citizens; imposing a wealth tax on the top 1%; and implementing a minimum corporate tax rate of 15%.

For the PAP, achieving the same kind of electoral success it has enjoyed the past 60 years could be tough as voters seek a broader range of views in parliament.

Wong is just the second prime minister not from Singapore founder Lee Kuan Yew’s family — Lee’s son Lee Hsien Loong was prime minister from 2004-2024. And few countries have more at risk from the global trade war than Singapore, which turned itself from a colonial port into a global financial and trading hub in just a couple of generations following independence.

That transformation has earned the PAP a lot of loyalty. Singaporeans enjoy one of the highest standards of livings in the world, in a city that boasts modern public transportation, efficient healthcare and a public housing program that’s allowed nine out of 10 citizens to own a home. But Singapore isn’t immune to the changes roiling the world.

With voters unnerved by elevated costs-of-living, including a spike in food, real estate and automobile costs, Wong has tapped billions of dollars from the state coffers to expand social safety nets and provide subsidies for everything from meals to transport to elder care.

Consumer prices are on average 17% higher than they were in the last election in 2020, mirroring the spike in inflation seen ahead of the PAP’s weakest election, in terms of the vote share, in 2011. Public housing, or HDB, costs have soared too.

The opposition, splintered among about 10 different parties, is aiming to build on its modest electoral achievements in the last election. They’ve complained about what they say are the PAP’s built-in advantages when it comes to setting the terms of the election.

“There’s a lot of unfairness in how the election itself is structured,” said Ravi Philemon, the leader of Red Dot United, an opposition party contesting 15 seats.

Key complaints include the lack of an independent election commission, five-figure deposits for candidates to register and one of the world’s shortest campaign seasons. Campaigning this year is limited to just nine days.

And then there are the electoral boundaries: the districts Singaporeans vote in can change drastically from one election to the next, with some disappearing entirely. This year, residents in some areas will be voting in their fourth different district in five elections.

The elections department says the changes are valid adjustments meant to accommodate population shifts and the development of new property. Opposition groups have another term for it: gerrymandering.

That was the situation facing one of the country’s most outspoken opposition figures, Chee Soon Juan, who spent several years in the western town of Bukit Batok pushing for changes to the community and handing out fliers at food courts known as hawker centers.

Following several failed election bids since 1992, Chee ran for a seat there in 2016, garnering about 39% of the vote. In 2020 he edged closer with 45% in a straight contest against a PAP incumbent.

But on a sweltering Sunday in March, as Chee stood before reporters to announce his candidacy, his mood was dour. Less than two weeks earlier, the single-delegate Bukit Batok district he planned to run in was written off the electoral map and merged into a larger, neighboring group constituency.

“We haven’t got any other choice,” he said after moving his candidacy to a new district in the north some six weeks before the vote. “The way that the boundaries are drawn is not transparent and it’s hugely frustrating. You almost have to start all over again.”

Group Representation Constituencies

The widespread use of group-representation constituencies — districts where voters elect a slate with as many as five delegates from a single party — is a common opposition complaint. With each candidate running for office required to put up a deposit of S$13,500 ($10,300) per candidate, more than two months’ income for the average Singaporean, fielding a full team in those areas can become prohibitive.

Opposition leaders point out that Singapore’s Elections Department reports to the office of the prime minister, who also appoints a group of civil servants that determine electoral boundaries. And that committee is chaired by a secretary to the prime minister.

Government and ruling party officials have regularly pushed back on each of the opposition’s accusations, calling the group constituency system necessary to ensure that parliament reflects the multiracial make-up of the population and reiterating that adjustments to the electoral boundaries are meant to reflect population changes in those areas.

The procedures surrounding Singapore’s elections have been regularly debated in parliament and the country “has held free and fair elections since independence,” the government said in a statement to Bloomberg. The financial deposits required of candidates “ensure that only those who are serious in contesting in the elections step forward, while ensuring that the amount of the deposit does not become a barrier to entry,’’ according to the statement.

The group constituencies, known as GRCs, ensure that the rights and interests of minorities are protected, the government said.

“The GRC system guarantees that Parliament will always be multiracial and representative of the make-up of our society,” according to the statement. “This is to ensure our politics do not become racially charged.”

For the PAP, the group districts are also a way for it to bring in new blood without much fuss: first-time candidates can run as part of a team and benefit from the popularity of more seasoned politicians. One such district this year is uncontested, giving the PAP an easy five seats before voting even takes place.

In most of the group representation constituencies this year, the PAP has continued a strategy of pairing senior and well-known candidates with first-timers.

Finally, opposition groups have also criticized the government’s election-year spending boost as a means of essentially buying support. And Tan Cheng Bock, chairman of the opposition Progress Singapore Party, said the ruling party’s warnings about the impact of the global trade war are meant to “instill fear in the voter.”

Wong, meanwhile, has called the increase in government spending “temporary help measures” that only make up a small part of the budget. He’s been vocal about the uncertainty unleashed by the escalating trade war and the potential impact on Singapore. The government recently revised its 2025 economic growth forecast down to 0-2% from a previous 1%-3%.

“The predictable and rules-based order we once knew is fading,” Wong, 52, said in early April. “The new era will be more volatile, with more frequent and unpredictable shocks.”

The ruling party may have reason to worry: Before US President Donald Trump rocked the world with tariff threats, voters dealt a blow to incumbent parties in elections from France and the US to Argentina and India.

Yet even if anti-incumbent sentiment peaks in Singapore, no opposition party will be able to single-handedly deprive the PAP of its parliamentary super-majority. The biggest among them is the Workers’ Party and it is contesting in fewer than one-third of the seats up for grabs.

Publicly, however, Wong signaled that he isn’t taking any chances.

“If you look at the results of elections in other countries over the past year you know what has happened — incumbent parties were either defeated or they suffered major losses,” the prime minister said this month. “We must never assume that the PAP will automatically win the election just because we have been in power all this while.”