The Value of Moderate Opposition
Much of the post-mortem analysis on the results of GE2015 has been focused on the likely reasons for the almost 10% swing towards the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP). There has been little, if any, analysis on the vast disparity in percentage votes secured across the eight opposition parties. This article is an initial attempt to address this.
I am not going to get into a detailed analysis of all the eight parties, instead, I am simply going to focus on the first and second placed finishers among the opposition parties. These were the Workers’ Party (WP) and the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP).
The WP garnered an average 39.75% of the vote in the 10 electoral divisions it contested. It succeeded in returning six candidates to Parliament out of 28 it put up for election. On balance, this was a credible result when going up against the PAP behemoth.
On the other hand, the SDP garnered an average 31.23% of the vote in five divisions. None of its 11 candidates came close to getting elected.
In electoral terms, the 8.5% popular vote gap between the WP and SDP is vast. If one looks at it in perspective where WP contested twice as many divisions as the SDP, then the gap is even greater as more divisions contested would naturally mean that some relatively weak results would pull down the WP’s average vote.
So, the question that arises is this: Why the huge gap between WP and SDP, let alone the WP and the other minor parties? The answer, as I have stated publicly for quite a number of years, is that WP has positioned itself as moderate opposition and, more importantly, is widely perceived to be so by most voters.
In contrast, the SDP is viewed by many voters, especially in the crucial middle ground, as positioned more towards the left of the political spectrum or in being liberal. This, however, was not always the case. The SDP under its first leader, Chiam See Tong, made it a point to keep his party closer towards the political centre.
Read more: http://six-six.com/article/the-value-of-moderate-opposition
Much of the post-mortem analysis on the results of GE2015 has been focused on the likely reasons for the almost 10% swing towards the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP). There has been little, if any, analysis on the vast disparity in percentage votes secured across the eight opposition parties. This article is an initial attempt to address this.
I am not going to get into a detailed analysis of all the eight parties, instead, I am simply going to focus on the first and second placed finishers among the opposition parties. These were the Workers’ Party (WP) and the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP).
The WP garnered an average 39.75% of the vote in the 10 electoral divisions it contested. It succeeded in returning six candidates to Parliament out of 28 it put up for election. On balance, this was a credible result when going up against the PAP behemoth.
On the other hand, the SDP garnered an average 31.23% of the vote in five divisions. None of its 11 candidates came close to getting elected.
In electoral terms, the 8.5% popular vote gap between the WP and SDP is vast. If one looks at it in perspective where WP contested twice as many divisions as the SDP, then the gap is even greater as more divisions contested would naturally mean that some relatively weak results would pull down the WP’s average vote.
So, the question that arises is this: Why the huge gap between WP and SDP, let alone the WP and the other minor parties? The answer, as I have stated publicly for quite a number of years, is that WP has positioned itself as moderate opposition and, more importantly, is widely perceived to be so by most voters.
In contrast, the SDP is viewed by many voters, especially in the crucial middle ground, as positioned more towards the left of the political spectrum or in being liberal. This, however, was not always the case. The SDP under its first leader, Chiam See Tong, made it a point to keep his party closer towards the political centre.
Read more: http://six-six.com/article/the-value-of-moderate-opposition
