What does the result of GE2015 say?

I wrote an article before the GE with these paragraphs below and asked several questions. I have now added the answers to the questions I posed now that the Singaporeans have given a bigger mandate to the PAP. The Singaporeans have voted and spoken, these are what they want going forward.

‘Singaporeans must take a step back and think very seriously about this GE. It is a life or death situation for Singaporeans. This is the time to determine the future you want for yourself and your children. It is no joking matter and not something that can be left to fate or to fools. If Singaporeans think that we have a good govt in charge and the direction the govt is taking the people forward is the right path, vote for the govt.

If there is doubt, if you are not happy with what you are seeing, not happy with the direction you are moving, it is time to reclaim your country. You cannot afford to wait anymore. Going forward can be the end of the good life for many Singaporeans.’

 
Can we continue to pay the ministers and the elite in the millions? YES

Can we afford to keep adding foreigners at such a rate to this little piece of rock? Are you happy with 5.5m, 6.9m or 10m people in this island? YES, YES

Do you want to pay outrageous money for a small little flat for 99 years as your prize possession in life? YES

Do you want to be a minority in your own country? YES

Do you want to have a say about the future of your country, to shape your country or to allow a few individuals to do as they pleased? NO

Do you want to save for a life time only for your savings to be locked up or to be forced to pay for insurance that you cannot say no to?  YES

Do you want the country’s reserves or surpluses to make your life better or to make the life better for foreigners?  To make life better for foreigners

Do you want to let the govt decide what you can read, see and say? YES

Do you want the govt to plan your life, your savings, from cradle to grave? YES

Do you want a one party govt? YES

I am sure the govt has heard the Singaporeans loud and clear and will go forward to do what it thinks best. No need to be deaf frogs anymore. The Singaporeans have given the govt a blank cheque to do what it thinks best for the Singaporeans or at least 70% of the Singaporeans said so. The future of Singaporeans is safe and sound and they can look forward to celebrate SG100 under the PAP.

Or we have just witnessed the insanity of a people at its peak?

PMET situation top priority to Swee Say

Swee Say is looking at the PMET problems quite seriously. Credit must go to him for as much as I know, no minister had dug hard enough on this matter. Swee Say is looking at different angles, concentration of foreigners by location ie enclaves, company, industry and department. If he is serious, hope this is not just election talk, things will be moving for the good of Singaporean PMETs. Don’t ask me how the situation can get to this sorry state of affair.

The strange thing that he said is that there is a ‘need to speed up the transfer of knowledge and expertise from foreign PMEs to Singaporeans so that local workers will be able to drive the economy in the future’.  I can believe that in some top level jobs in some industries there will be a need for such transfer to knowledge and expertise. But at mid level, what is there to transfer or how much to transfer when most of these foreigners are new or fresh graduates, new to the jobs. In many cases they are here to learn on the job and Singaporeans are the ones doing the transfer.

There is a false assumption that the transfer is always from foreigners. Is that true? How many of the foreigners really have the expertise and knowledge that Singaporeans from world best universities did not have? And doesn’t anyone know that many of the foreigners came from 3^rd World villages, with fake degrees or from degree mills, you mean Singaporeans are so daft that need them to transfer their knowledge and skills to them?

Let me see, what kind of skill sets that these half baked foreigners have to transfer? Cheating, how to get fake degrees, how to gang together to cheat Singaporeans, or how to beat up Singaporeans for fun?

Sorry for the digression. Let’s hope Swee Say will do a good job and report some of his achievements in the media, where are the concentration or enclaves of foreigners, which industries, companies and departments where there is no Singaporean core. He needs to know these first before he can set up to clean them up. Hope the main media would report on them, the before or now and then, to let the people know that something real has been done. The results will tell if Swee Say and his MOM are real in what they said they are doing. Sekali like the Jobs Bank, no data leh, cannot tell leh. Or like some minister said, it is not good for the people to know. Then how?

The GE is over, and the Singaporeans have given the PAP a bigger mandate to look after their interest. Would the PAP forget this and turn against the Singaporeans and continue with its pro foreigner policies and leave the Singaporeans in the lurch? The PAP has another 5 years to prove that it is pro Singaporeans. Or it may take the big mandate as Singaporeans telling the PAP to do what it thinks best, like before, with more zeal?

GE2015 – What could the results be?

The landslide victory of the PAP with many GRCs and SMCs chalking more than 70% of popular votes is too good to believe. The overall popular vote rose from 60% to 70%, a plus of 10% over the last GE. Many opposition parties and analysts were trying to make sense of the big swing. How could it be possible and what were the main causes of the swing, albeit the swing could not be due to a single factor and many other factors must have come together to reach this ending.

Let me do a review based on a single factor that was very prominent in this election, the new citizens. A total of 280,000 or close to 300,000 new citizens were eligible to vote rising from 2.1m in 2011 to 2.4m in 2015. This works out to be an increase of 15% of voters coming from the new citizens. A 15% increase in voter strength is very significant. If all the new citizens were to vote for one party, it simply means the party’s vote share would go up by 15%. Any party that won the election by 15% or less, in the case of the PAP and assuming that they are the main beneficiary of the new citizen votes, is actually hovering around a 50% share of the popular votes if the new citizens were not in the equation. Any PAP team that had less than a 15% winning margin would actually lose and go to the opposition.

The following are the PAP teams and single members that won less than 15%. 

1. Marine Parade GRC 64%
2. Sengkang West 62%
3. East Coast GRC 60.7%
4. Fengshan 57.5%
5. Punggol East 51.8%

These 13 seats could theoretically go to the opposition if the new citizens were not in play. No way would Li Lee Lian lose her seat in Punggol East.

The following GRCs and SMCs would be close calls.

1. Marsiling Yew Tee GRC 68.7%
2. Bukit Panjang 68.4%
3. Jalan Besar GRC 67.7%
4. Holland Bukit Timah 66.6%
5. Potong Pasir 66.4%

As for the margins of Aljunied GRC (50.95%) and Hougang (57.7%), the winning margins could have been much higher if the 15% new citizen votes did not add up on the side of the PAP. PAP’s vote in Aljunied could fall by another 15% to 34% and Hougang to 27%.

Technically, all the 70 plus percent votes of PAP should be less 15% to bring them down to more humanly acceptable level, in the 60s. So would the popular votes, going down to 55% instead of the 70%. Given the downtrend and the negative sentiments, this is about right and was the expectation of most analysts and the most fear situation in the PAP camp. But all the above extrapolation were not meant to be with the new citizen coming in at full force.

PAP should know that this is the real situation and must take stock at their growing unpopularity and growing dissent among the true blue Singaporeans. The deception is temporary. If there was indeed a ground swell, there would be roaring from the HDB flats whenever a result was announced, like during a football match. There would be spontaneous celebrations and people running wild with excitement and congratulating themselves for supporting the PAP to such an unbelievable win. The HDB flats were silent, the streets were silent. Did these say anything about the win? Remember the wins in Hougang and Punggol East and the spontaneous celebrations with people in the streets in a joyous and celebratory mood? There was none in this PAP landslide win other than among the supporters in the stadiums.

How much of the above analysis is pure speculation and how much is the truth, only the PAP inner core members know, the strategists and planners behind the PAP success story in this GE.

PS. The above analyst is based on the assumption that there was an additional 300,000 new citizens/voters in this GE. Another blogger has pointed out that the number of electorate increased from 2.35m to 2.46m or an increase of 110,000. Which is the true number?

Let’s try to figure out which is which since we do not have the official data.

There were 200,000 Singaporeans outside Singapore and not allowed to vote this time. This is about 8% of the electorate. The turnout for this GE was about 94%.  This implies that the 200,000 Singaporeans would have been taken out from the eligible voters or else the turnout would be less than 92% or near to 18% as the turnout of 2011 was 90%.

The eligible voters this time should be 2.35m less 200k or 2.15m instead. Thus there was still an increase of 2.46m less 2.15m or 310,000 voters. How this number came about, I dunno.  My analysis is accurate only if there were 300,000 new citizen/voters. If the number varies somewhat, the findings would be proportional to the changes using the same parameter. 

Would anyone be able to provide the real numbers?

PS2. My assumption that overseas Singaporeans were not allowed to vote is wrong and I will be putting up another article to revise my data and findings.

Opposition Parties should not be disheartened

The mood in the opposition camp is a scene of despair. What happened, why the big loss? How could it be, all the indicators were in favour of a big swing and the PAP was up for a good rubbing. The result was so shocking that many would have resigned to the fate and think of giving up. It is just too big a defeat that said it is all over.

Many started to reflect on all the goodies thrown at the voters and blaming the voters for turning against the opposition parties, the people fighting so hard for their freedom and independence. What could a few pieces of meat thrown at them compared to the lockup of their CPF savings, the unending payment for Medishield Life, high cost of living, PMETs losing their jobs to foreigners, being a minority, an alien in their own country and many more serious issues? The people may be called daft but they are not that daft.

The trend of falling popularity of the PAP was a confirmed down trend since the last GE. And this was proven by the Presidential Election and the two by elections. The people were turning against the PAP. They could not change their views in 9 days and with a few goodies they knew would not last. Though credit must be given to the PAP for coming with more pro Singaporean policies, for tackling the PMET and foreigner problems, cost of living problems, it is still to early to see the results and whether the policy change is real and will continue after the GE. The people cannot be so daft to throw all precautions away and voted blindly for the PAP.

The PAP did not win the election because they have won the hearts and minds of the people. At best the position was a status quo and the falling trend arrested. The key factor is the 300,000 new voters consisting of new citizens. This is the main factor that led to the swing. See my post ‘2015 – The Mathematician won’.

Going forward, the main question is what the PAP would do to win the voters to its side. Would they think that this win allows them to continue with their crazy anti Singaporean policies? Or would they take stock, thank the mathematician for the reprieve of another 5 terms to get things right? Or would they think that they have the right formula to win more elections by simply adding more new citizens into the pool?

The anger and distrust of the PAP are still there and these cannot go away unless the PAP changes its pro foreigner policies to pro Singaporean policies. The opposition parties must not fall into despair and chase after the ghost. There is no ghost. The Seventh Month is over. The number game cannot continue without the heart in the right place and looking after the Singaporean and their interests. No political party can continue to rule the people without looking after the good of the citizens.

It is not the end of the game, not the end of the opposition. The PAP has been given another chance. They know how they won this election, not because the people were turning around to support them. They could delude themselves to think that they have won over the people. They know jolly well that the truth is still out there.

GE2015 – The Mathematician won

A mathematician is more powerful than a magician. David Copperfield could create illusions but these are temporary effects of deception, not permanent. The number game of the mathematicians is real if they are playing with real numbers. This GE is won by the mathematicians doing just that.

There were some numbers being thrown around on the impact of new citizens. I received a figure of 280,000 new citizens. If I can recall correctly, it was reported that the number of voters increased from 2.1m to 2.4m, this is close enough to the 280,000 new citizens plus some locals. The percentage increased of new citizens in the electorate is thus 15% approximate.

To simplify the computation for the GE where there is a 10% swing towards the PAP or a 10% loss from the opposition camp, let me use the 60:40 formula to show how the results finally added up. In a constituency of 100,000 voters, assuming the percentage of votes was 60% and 40% in 2011, if the voters still voted for the respective parties, the result would now be 65% and 35%, that is if all the new citizens voted on the side of the 60%. It the new citizens voted for the 40%, the result would be 52% and 48%.

From the above, if the PAP got 60% in the last election, it should be getting 65% and a 40% vote for the opposition then would become 35%. On the reverse, if the WP got 60% then, its votes would now be 52% and the PAP should be 48%. Aljunied fits like a glove.

If I used a 20% increase of new citizens instead of 15%, the numbers would be 67%/33% and 50%/50% respectively. By applying this 15% increase of new citizen votes to every constituency, other that a few results with bigger swings due to factors like PGP, subsidies, etc, it is almost as perfect as you can get. The mathematician got it all worked out. A 15% increase in new citizens will win this election.

The voting pattern of the voters did not change much.  They did not turn against the opposition parties. They voted almost like the last GE but the result is totally different from the additional votes due to the new citizens. See how important the number of new citizens played in this GE?

Yes, the Mathematician won.

PS. Please don’t blame the Singaporeans for chasing after meats thrown at them. They did not. Using the same 60:40 formula, the 30% hard core pro opposition percentage would fall to 26% with a 15% increase in new citizens. And no, the theory that the voters voted for the PAP for fear of kicking them out is rubbish. The voters still supported their respective parties. It is the new citizen factor that changed the result of this GE. And you can expect more new citizens to be added to keep them voting for the PAP in future election.

The big question, how to stop the inflow of new citizens at such huge numbers not to change the pattern and result of future GEs.