Analysis of overseas votes
I’ve crunched the numbers in a spreadsheet to see how overseas votes skew. (See my previous post for a summary of the raw numbers of overseas votes.) Note that given the small number of overseas votes, this is unlikely to be relevant to the actual outcomes of the elections. It’s more useful as an indicator of the political views of overseas Singaporeans.
In the spreadsheet, I calculated the percentage of voters who went PAP for both local votes only and overseas votes only. I did this for every electoral district, but because the voter numbers for SMCs are so small that the percentages for those are of doubtful significance, I’m listing only those for GRCs here:
- WP GRCs:
- Aljunied: Local 45.3% PAP, overseas 43.9% PAP
- East Coast: Local 54.8% PAP, overseas 52.7% PAP
- Moulmein-Kallang: Local 58.6% PAP, overseas 52.7% PAP
- Nee Soon: Local 58.4% PAP, overseas 66.4% PAP
- NSP GRCs:
- Chua Chu Kang: Local 61.2% PAP, overseas 60.7% PAP
- Jurong: Local 67.0% PAP, overseas 67.1% PAP
- Marine Parade: Local 56.6% PAP, overseas 52.8% PAP
- Tampines: 57.2% PAP, overseas 59.3% PAP
- SDP GRCs:
- Holland-Bukit Timah: Local 60.1% PAP, overseas 52% PAP
- Sembawang: Local 63.9% PAP, overseas 71.3% PAP
- RP GRCs:
- Ang Mo Kio: Local 69.3% PAP, overseas 64.9% PAP
- West Coast: Local 66.6% PAP, overseas 67.1% PAP
- SPP GRCs:
- Bishan-Toa Payoh: Local 56.9% PAP, overseas 47.7% PAP
- SDA GRCs:
- Pasir Ris-Punggol: Local 64.8% PAP, overseas 66.9% PAP
- All votes: Local 60.1% PAP, overseas 57.8% PAP
Some observations:
- It should surprise no one that overall, overseas votes skew towards non-PAP parties. I can think of a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, higher income groups are more likely to vote against PAP, and those who are overseas tend to come from these groups. Secondly, overseas voting comes at a non-trivial cost unless you happen to live close to one of the very few overseas polling centres, so overseas voters are disproportionately those who are not apathetic about politics, and we know the PAP draws its support disproportionately from those who are apathetic.
- The skews in overseas votes are surprisingly unevenly distributed across electoral districts. There are some GRCs where the skew is very much in favour of the PAP, and others where the opposite holds.
- The more private housing an electoral district contains, the more likely it is to skew opposition relative to the skew of local votes in that district. Conversely, the more blue-collar an electoral district is, the more likely it is to be even more pro-PAP than the local votes are.
- Joo Chiat is smaller than every SMC except Whampoa, but it had the most number of overseas voters among SMCs. Unsurprising given the large amount of private housing (read: rich people) in Joo Chiat.
- Rumours that after counting overseas votes, the winning margin in Potong Pasir is only 78 votes were untrue. This would have been the case if all 38 overseas votes in Potong Pasir had gone to the SPP. My guess is this rumour came about from someone who knew there were 38 registered overseas voters from Potong Pasir and leapt to a conclusion before the overseas votes were counted.
There were more than 100 thousands of Overseas Singaporeans (OS) who have not voted for many reasons, some of these obstacles put up by the PAP as they are aware that OS who have been moe exposed, and would likely to vote the oppositions -
- requiring OS to register EVERY year, and have to provide FULL details of the period that you have been in Singapore in the last 3 years
- register on time before the writ is issued: there were no announcements in many of the countries, HK included before the writ was issued in April 2011
Then the polling stations are located in only very limited places.
If most of the OS have voted, marginal wins in constituencies lke Joo Chiat, Potong Pasir, and even the GRCs at East Coast , Tampines and Toa Payoh-Bishan would have fallen to the opposition which political anaylysts have indicated where a fall in popular vote for the PAP to below 60% will see more GRCs fall to the opposition.
Comment by soojenn — May 12, 2011 @ 4:49 am
1. It took some time for me to figure out what you meant by requiring people to ‘register every year’. Basically, if you register more than a year before the writ of election issued, they will send you an email telling you to re-register so that your date of registration is not too long ago. But it was not a particularly onerous process. If I recall correctly, when I re-registered, all my particulars had been filled in, including the previous information I had provided on when I was in Singapore. All I had to do was update the information on things that had changed in between my last registration and the latest one. This is understandable given the existence of the residency requirement.
2. That said, I think there should not be a residency requirement for overseas voters, since there are many reasons people don’t spend time in Singapore which have nothing to do with their commitment to Singapore.
3. I’m not sure I object to the deadline being when the writ is issued. It was stated clearly on the Elections Dept website that that was when the deadline was — is that enough of an ‘announcement’? If you mean giving an explicit date, note that the Elections Dept has no idea when the PAP will dissolve Parliament, so they cannot give an explicit date before it happens. Perhaps it would be more reasonable to make the deadline shortly after the writ is issued, but the Elections Dept does need time to check that you are qualified to vote. I’m not sure if it would be difficult for them to do so if they make the deadline later.
4. The limited spots of the polling stations are a problem. It’s all because they require voters to show up in person. Only a few consulates or embassies have the manpower to allow for voting. I think we should have postal voting, like many first world countries do.
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