Why Punggol East is set for a nail-biting finish
Posted on Jan 21, 2013 9:31 PM Updated: Jan 21, 2013 9:43 PM
By
Elgin Toh
[email protected]
If politics here has indeed become more “normal”, as many have been saying since 2011, then elections should become more closely fought affairs, as they often are elsewhere.
Razor thin margins are the rule these days in most democracies, except where significant gerrymandering happens, as in some non-state-wide elections in America.
When President Ma Ying-jeou was re-elected in Taiwan last year, polling day was an anti-climax. His 52 per cent of votes to his opponent’s 46 per cent was seen as very comfortable.
But in Singapore, at least before 2011, analysts associated close fights with, say, Cheng San GRC in 1997. The score? Fifty-five per cent to the People’s Action Party.
That changed with the 2011 general and presidential elections. In the latter, Dr Tony Tan won by just 0.35 per cent.
So when Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean predicted last week that the Punggol East by-election would be a “close fight”, he may have been right. Indeed, all fights from now on may be close or, at least, closer.
But in Punggol East, even without the shift towards “normal politics”, two factors could make the election a nail-biting finish.
Both happen to be in the Workers’ Party’s favour and may narrow the margin. In 2011, PAP’s Michael Palmer took 54.5 per cent, WP’s Lee Li Lian 41 per cent and Singapore
Democratic Alliance’s Desmond Lim 4.5 per cent.
The first is strategic voting. Well-established in social science, this is the tendency to switch votes from the candidate you like best to the viable candidate you dislike least. With three candidates, supporters of the third-placed one may switch allegience to avoid “wasting” votes.
The prediction - known as “Duverger’s Law” - that first-past-the-post elections produce two-party systems is based on strategic voting. Third-ranked parties find it difficult to survive because its supporters abandon it.
A few factors have been known to impede strategic voting. But none of them, I would argue, apply in this election.
First, if voters lack information on who is viable - say, three candidates are neck and neck - they won’t know how to vote strategically. This is surely not the case in Punggol East. The 2011 result clearly shows the SDA lagging.
Second, if one candidate is miles ahead, voters have no reason to switch sides. Vote-switching is always an attempt to affect the election outcome and this becomes irrational if the outcome is not even in doubt. But in Punggol East, no one is miles ahead, as even the PAP has acknowledged.
Finally, a laggard’s supporters won’t switch sides if they believe in his cause and want to send a message about its importance.
In many places, green parties and far-right ones are kept alive by hardcore fans who know they cannot win the election but take a longer-term view of things.
They see their vote as the start of a snowball effect or a call to others to take their agenda seriously.
In Punggol East, it is hard to argue that the SDA evokes such calculations. As likeable as Mr Lim is to some, nothing in his cause sets him apart from the others.
Hence, many of the 4.5 per cent who voted for him in 2011 are likely switch sides. If they want an opposition MP, as they demonstrated by voting against the PAP, WP would be their natural choice.
Of course, the entry of Reform Party’s Kenneth Jeyaretnam complicates this analysis slightly.
But the signs don’t point towards him being a viable candidate - from his supporter turnout at Nomination Day (fewer than 10) to his party’s lacklustre performance at the 2011 election (doing worse than not just WP, but also the National Solidarity Party, the Singapore People’s Party and the Singapore Democratic Party).
In all likelihood, Mr Jeyaretnam faces the same prospect as Mr Lim - the short end of the strategic voting stick.
The second factor that works in WP’s favour is the by-election effect. The opposition famously used it in the 1991 general election when it netted four seats - at that time its biggest haul in post-1965 history.
The argument is that Singaporeans cannot imagine the PAP out of power, so if you remove that fear, you can persuade them to vote for the opposition in larger numbers. This prompted the opposition to run in fewer than half the seats in Parliament in 1991.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, no doubt understanding how the calculus could work against the PAP, has called on voters to vote sincerely - that is, to vote PAP if they felt the government was doing a good job. Would voters listen to him?
Former WP candidate Eric Tan recently told me an anecdote of how the inverse of the by-election effect was at work in 2011.
He had a friend whose opposition-leaning extended family stayed in many parts of the east, including Aljunied GRC, East Coast GRC and Joo Chiat.
At a gathering before voting, they were worked up about the opposition cause and pledged to vote WP. But when they gathered again after Polling Day, those in Joo Chiat and East Coast GRC admitted they got cold feet and voted PAP, fearing it might lose power. Only those in Aljunied GRC kept their pledges because of the very strong WP team there.
If this story has predictive power in Punggol East, which I think it does, it is safe to say that some PAP votes would transfer to WP this time since there is no danger of a change in government. The only question is how many.
So, strategic voting anticipates some SDA votes going to WP, and the by-election effect anticipates some PAP votes going to WP.
Is it enough for WP to win? Impossible to tell right now. Which makes this an election with an unpredictable outcome - or what some people simply call “normal politics”.
