1/17/2013

Punggol East- How the cards are stacked?



Koh Poh Koon is every inch a super talent. His credential is impeccable. He looks a fairly decent chap and could be ministerial material too. And he has the backing of the ruling party and the whole machinery to support his quest to be the next MP. And there is the whole gang of ministers and top talents rooting for him. Would this be enough for Koh Poh Koon to win this election?

Lee Li Lian does not have the string of top notch qualifications to back her up. She is a member of a small opposition party and would definitely lack the resources of the ruling party, but adequate to put up a decent challenge for the job. She has walked the ground, the voters there had given her 41% in the last GE. Would this still be the case or could she add in a few more percentages to tip the scale?

What about the negative parts? The PAP camp would have to face the embarrassing story of Michael Palmer and to explain why they had led the voters down, for troubling them with this by election. This one is going to be sticky and a lot of emotions and subjectivity will be attached to it. The other big issue that the PAP cannot run away from is the AIM saga. This is a very dirty can of worm. And the opposition parties are going to extract every little piece of morsel from it. Not easy to ‘siam’ this one no matter how.

Then there is the whole load of cost of living issues, from influx of foreigners to housing, cars, medical, education, GST, COE, transportation, all providing the opposition a lot of ammunition to fire at the PAP.

What about the weaknesses of WP? It would have to do with her less than sparkling degrees and appointments. She would be more ordinary, more like everyone in Punggol East. She did not have anything to brag about, not even poverty or richest. She is just a person that the people would have to decide whether she is good enough to represent them in Parliament. Of course she would have all the time to do so, may be even resigning to be a full time MP.

The two candidates are stacked in the same way as in Hougang. A brilliant star against an ordinary person. The Hougangkias did not vote for a super talent. They were contented to put Png Eng Huat to Parliament against all odds. In Hougang, the WP was on the defensive with the same problem as PAP in the Michael Palmer affair. The WP was in a much weaker position than in Punggol East.

The additional minus factor against the WP must be the presence of two other contestants. Though they are not seen to receive much support from the voters in this election, but every vote counts. They could take away the few critical votes needed for the WP to unseat the PAP. This could be the most serious factor in this election against the WP. Would the voters cast all their votes for the two major party candidates and reduce the spoilt votes or votes going to the two spoilers? If the voters are clear in what they want, then Lee Li Lian of WP could stand a chance to do an upset. If too much votes are wasted on the two spoilers, then it looks like the PAP will have a better chance to winning. There is no doubt that the two spoilers’ votes will play a major part in the final outcome of this by election.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

In a democracy, we are voting for a person to REPRESENT us in parliament.
To be OUR VOICE in parliament.

So which candidate do you think is best qualified to speak for us in parliament?

A candidate from the party that looks after the interest of the rich people in Singapore?
Who sings the same song together with all the other clones in his his party?

Anonymous said...

if mp resigns due to sex scandal, his party will win the by-election, regardless if he's from PAP or the WP.

Anonymous said...

until now, still no sound from lim peh. anybody got inside information? under life support or alzheimer's or stroke or organ transplant or being cloned somewhere in russia?

so1trg said...

Dear Redbean,

That was the qualitative analysis of the by-election.

My little quantitative analysis using numbers from the Presidential elections in 2011.

Tony Tan - 35.2%
(Likely to be the core numbers of PAP supporters)
Tan Jee Say / Tan Kin Lian - 29.95%
(Core of the opposition supporters)
Tan Cheng Bock - 34.85%
(Swing voters)

Using the PE numbers, I believe PAP would have a base of 35%, leaving 65% to be split.

Lee Li Lian had 41% of the support from the previous General Election from this ward and assuming that this is Li Lian's base. Desmond Lim had 4.45% and assuming this percentage is Desmond's base.

That will leave 19.55%(100-35-41-4.45)% to be split among the 4 parties. Since Punggol East SMC is a PAP ward with 54% of the votes in the last election, apply this number they will have another 10.56%, opposition 8.99%.

At this point,
PAP - 45.56%
WP - 41%
SDA - 4.45%
Opposition (WP/SDA/RP) - 8.99%

For WP to win the elections, they need 4.57% of the remaining opposition votes which is slightly over half (50.8%) of the people thinking of voting opposition.

Doable proposition since the demographics in Punggol East is Young families, ideology not too drastically left wing. Furthermore looking at Reform Party's performance at the last GE, generally they won 35% of the votes in the wards they contested. ie 3.14% of the Opposition votes.

In propotion, if SDA maintains their share of 5% of the remaining opposition votes, another 5.39% is expected to go to Lee Li Lian.

Hence final vote count
PAP - 45.56%
WP - 46.39%
SDA - 4.90%%
RP - 3.15%

Of course this analysis is very rough and many assumptions. Purely for entertainment! :)

Anonymous said...

Forget about lim peh or the old hero or whatever, wooden ghost or holy cow lah! I think they have learned their lessons in Hougang and Aljunied GRC and know when not to open their gap again.

The deputy PM is currently calling the shots and he is telling Punggol residents that the arse doctor is conducting his own campaign. Let us see how this develops when the battle hots up and the PAP finds that they are loosing ground. Maybe deputy PM, like all the other PAP oldies before him, is making too early an assumption and may regret doing so.

Anonymous said...

i think 2 days before the voting, baby dragon will announce that limpeh sick. msm will show limpeh on wheelchair in hospital looking sad and sick. this will get the sympathy vote from the soft-hearted/sentimental/veryfastforget/stupid voters. the sympathy vote will only be 1 or 2 % but might be enough to win the pappies the constituency. this will be limpeh's last and final job for the pappies. the pappies will do this wayang because they cannot do the 'helping aunty fall down' show because do many times already.

Anonymous said...

I hope voters will stop voting for any elites. Under the current elite regime, the elites get richer and the rest gets poorer.

Anonymous said...

I just cannot understand how the deputy PM can sleep at night. He is either a complete idiot or a complete evil person.