Reflection on earlier predictions of GE2015

Reflection of GE 2015

A couple of months before GE2015, I was sharing with quite a number of people, including editors from TR Emeritus​ on what I thought would be the outcome of GE2015.

In retrospect, I did make some accurate predictions but also bad judgement as well.

I told them that most probably WP would retain Hougang but lose Punggol East while Aljunied GRC was going to be a 50-50 fight. I was hoping that WP could win East Coast GRC (at that time, the formation of Fengsan SMC was not made public yet.)

The reasons I gave was that those residents who have changed from PAP to WP management (aka Punggol East and Aljunied) would have experienced first hand the vast differences and changes in the management of their town. Particularly for Punggol East which I have quite a number of friends and relatives who stayed there had complained profusely against the drastic drop of cleanliness in their neighbourhood.

Linking this situation to the AHPETC saga would naturally create negativity among the swing voters. Punggol East was thus expected to lose. As for Aljunied GRC, the adverse swing would mainly come from the negativity derived from the FMSS saga.

As for East Coast GRC, I would expect WP to win because I thought that those voters there would not have the bad first hand experience as those voters in Punggol East had. It would just follow the expected upward trending of increasing opposition support nation wide.

I also expected other opposition parties would fair better and we might see non-WP MPs in parliament this time round.

I was proven half right. WP did lose Punggol East and Aljunied GRC did have an extremely close fight. WP nearly lost, only won by a razor thin margin. But I was proven wrong about the isolated effect of the AHPETC saga and the upward trending of opposition support. I have underestimated the combined effect of Pioneer Package and the lost of middle ground voters' confidence.

Of course, some of the people I have spoken to, were practically laughing my predictions of WP losing Punggol East and Aljunied GRC having a close fight. Especially for the editors from TR Emeritus. They thought that it was due to my bias against WP which made me to come up with such predictions of loss of WP in Punggol East.

Some even thought that WP would win Aljunied GRC with INCREASED margin, citing reports that survey done on the ground has shown that very few voters regard AHPETC as important. I told them that it just needed a mere 5% of SWING voters to regard that as important, that will already be a killer.

Well, apart from WP's results, I guess if I have known that there would be a great National swing against opposition, I would have given this GE a big miss and save a lot of money!

Nevertheless, I will learn from this GE2015 that no matter how people want to isolate themselves from other "opposition" parties, all Non-PAP parties will always be viewed as one by Singaporeans.; those middle ground swing voters. It will be a wishful thinking that we could effect a clear differentiation between the different opposition parties.

All for one, one for all? Some of us may not want to think that way, but that's what the middle ground voters think.

Goh Meng Seng