Was Pritam Singh crying wolf? Modelling the 2025 Singapore General Election

It must've been an annus horribilis for the Wokers' Party for its leader Pritam Singh to muse publicly that his party could face a wipeout in the imminent 2025 general election. Was it the crushing defeat of the government-appointed Leader of the Opposition in the State Court, on charges of lying under oath to a parliamentary committee and a stinging rebuke by the judge? Or its second ever sex scandal? But then, what would we make of the completely opposite forecast by foreign observers who say this is the most competitive general election of Singapore's history, where the opposition is poised for game-changing victories that will surely transform the political landscape?

Only one of these two predictions can be true, but which? Is Pritam Singh voicing a rare warning to his partisans, or is this an attempt to rally his troops by reusing the boogeyman from the previous election?

Pritam Singh prefers to play a game of electronic football with Death!

The return of Dunleavy

We have previously modelled Singapore's general elections on Dunleavy's multinational analysis of dominant party systems in 2015 and 2020, where the People's Action Party takes the place of the "dominant party", and every general election is really a plebicite on the ruling party and its ability to deliver what voters want.

Dunleavy notes that dominant party systems are only challenged when there are multiple viable parties contesting an election. And as a viable party is one that makes a bid for all the seats nationally or within a state, there is no viable opposition in Singapore at the moment.

We believe that the explanatory and predictive strength of the model has been proven by the results of previous elections:

• Previously, Goh Meng Seng was the first to directly expose the myth of the ruling party's effectiveness, garnering the narrowest opposition defeat in Tampines GRC and the sundowning of Mah Bow Tan
• In 2020, Tan Cheng Bock's Progress Singapore Party became the second biggest opposition party in parliament, overnight, by taking a deeply convergent approach and challenging the most seats
• Pritam Singh expanded WP to a second GRC by ditching the party's convergent approach and abandoning its ageing and shrinking Teochew Hougang core, instead tacking to the far left by fielding activist Raeesah Khan and making her the face of their electoral campaign
• PAP remained the dominant party with a parliamentary supermajority because it kept facing one-on-one contests with different challengers across the electoral map, which guarantee its overall victory

Prediction #1: PAP will remain the dominant party with a supermajority in 2025, unless any single opposition party (i.e. not "coalition") decides to challenge all paraliamentary seats.

Where do the major parties stand in 2025?

The rational voter in Dunleavy's model bases their decision in the ballot box on the perceived advantage in "effectiveness" that a dominant party enjoys over the opposition challenger. For the voter in Singapore in 2025, that means: has the PAP or the opposition party come down more, in their estimation?

Prediction #2: WP's scandals will cost it big: at least ONE GRC, and they will pick up ZERO new wards. Historically, Singapore's voters have punished political parties across the board for breaching various moral codes and scandals. In political science literature, this has been described as altruistic punishment in elections.

And which demographic will overwhelmingly punish WP? The young, progressive, liberal left that Pritam Singh heavily courted in the youthful ward of Sengkang GRC. Pritam throwing Raeesah Khan and party activists under the bus will have a consequence with them.

WP has a special relationship with its core supporters, who are quick to contextualise, forgive and move on from any WP scandal, and are conversely willing to bear eternal grudges against any PAP scandal. It will be interesting to find out if the WP scandals will finally illustrate a clear line between WP's partisans and normal voters, across the East Coast, Bedok, Aljunied, and Sengkang wards.

Prediction #3: PAP will lose a GRC in the west to the PSP. Sure, both the WP and PAP have had their scandals this election cycle. Guess who hasn't? That's right, the PSP. This means a Dunleavian voter would be most inclined to cast their vote for the PSP if all 3 were in the running for an SMC or GRC. But since they aren't, the Dunleavian voter in the west will be even more likely to cast their vote for PSP, knowing that WP will not make any further inroads this year, and in fact are due for electoral punishment by disillusioned voters.

These are all the predictions that we can confidently make.

The positioning of Singapore Democratic Party is in flux: Dr Chee is doing interesting things but making a huge gamble. By recasting the social-democratic SDP into an anti-immigration party last year, Dr Chee correctly identifies a trend of voter rejection of various planks of the neoliberal, Davosian agenda. But has he also done enough to assuage the potential alienation of his party's traditional vote bank?

Goh Meng Seng is on far safer ground with his more nuanced attack on the PAP's population policy, with his party and coalition being coherently right of centre all along. But as a coalition, Goh is only as strong as the weakest link in his coalition...

What will the fight be over in 2025?

Any serious and competent party that is not the PAP is likely to run a campaign attacking:

1. the PAP's integrity and ethical and sex scandals;
2. the PAP's economic vision for Singapore as a financial hub and metropole of the East, with its attendant problems of a shrinking native population, increasing inequality, unequal chances for citizens, and an increasingly irrelevant and shrinking middle class;
3. the PAP's recent wholesale adoption of neoliberal and progressive DEI agendas, which demonstrates it is out of touch with both the electorate and the global rejection of progressivism; and downplaying
4. the importance of the sole thing PAP is doing right: yearly regular handouts and transitioning Singapore into more of a welfare state
5. PAP's long term attempt to incorporate the liberal left into the party, vis-a-vis various progressive or social activists 

Any serious and competent party should NOT complain about gerrrymandering. Building a nationally competitive party is not a luxury the opposition can afford. There's only one way to ensure that your party doesn't get stymied or caught unprepared when constituency lines are redrawn every election: just have a party huge enough, with volunteers and grassroots wide enough that you don't need to sweat to find assenters, polling agents and campaigners in any ward. That is a serious, competent, and viable party.

Are there any credible alternative models?

We wish to present, with apologies to Prof Chua Beng Huat, a video where he explains why 70 % of Singaporeans vote for PAP. Note that his explanation has a Dunleavian foundation: PAP gets this much votes because it delivers what the people want. Elsewhere, Dr Chua has elaborated that Singaporean voters will ensure that the opposition does win at least one SMC and one GRC, to ensure that their concerns about inequality and poverty have a voice in parliament. As a corollary to the altruistic punishment in elections phenomenon, Chua suggests that there also exists an altruistic sacrifice in elections phenomenon, where one ward "reluctantly" volunteers itself as the core of a long-term seat of political dissent.

Why did it turn out to centre around Hougang and Potong Pasir? Possibly because Upper Serangoon Road was a historic suburban and economic development pre-dating the PAP and its New Town policy. Perhaps this is why WP has consistently tried to branch out only to neighbouring wards, and why there appears to be a limit to its slow expansion. The question for PSP is thus: Is the west coast economically and demographically strong enough to serve as an independent centre?