Hope you are not advising another of the opposition parties. With your crooked analysis, basically one cast one's votes not based on one's preferred candidate but purely on tactical consideration. If your analysis is correct then those votes that have gone to TCB would have gone to TT anyway irrespective of whether TJS was in or not. But that did not happen. Someone did a survey of voters when the poll had closed but before the results were counted. He took the first and second choices into consideration. TT would have little of the others' votes and TCB would have won as long as there were only 3 candidates, even though TJS's votes would have either mostly gone to TKL or been destroyed, with a small number (those who cannot stand TKL but want to deny TT the win) going TCB's way enough for him to win. The only way that TJS's votes would have gone to TT is that he was a PAP dog and was publicly known but that was not the case. And the only reason why you gave this wired conclusion is that you are a TJS sidekick.
I am far least interested to offer any advice or be interested in someone like TJS whom I abandoned to vote TCB a few days before polling.
But I believe in a thing as political perception. Tan Cheng Bock would occupy "opposition ground" in the absence of TJS, whether it is intentional or painted by the media. In the course of that, he would lose the PAP votes (though not all). The reason why TT did not get most of the 60.1% was because it was perceived that there were 2 PAP candidates, or rather, one-and-half PAP candidates. On the other hand, opposition votes were also split between TCB and TJS.
Now, this is quite common political psychology around the world - when a leftist party pulls out, a rightist party moves centre and can still get some conservative left votes. It can be the same rightist party in 1950 and 1955 and the factor will change some things. I am not pulling magic from a hat.
I don't think preferred candidate or tactical consideration was a majority. We were into a mode where candidates were considered by voters based on how close they were to the government, and how much each of the 3 candidates (excluding TKL who got too few votes to determine where his vote base was) commanded in their respective markets. I am quite confident that this is a fact.
Maybe you are right that TCB would have won, but it won't be TT 35% vs TCB 35% plus 25% (from TJS) therefore = 60%. More like TT getting 45% and TCB 50%. Which would mean my point stands.