Takeaways from the US election for Singapore’s next GE
Singapore voters are chiefly concerned about bread-and-butter issues and how government policies affect their lives and livelihoods
IT WAS not too long ago that the Republican Party was seen as a party for elites. Yet, tapping into anti-elitist sentiments is arguably one of the key ways it has won over a majority of the electorate at the 2024 US election.
Some analysts have pinned this down to some degree of disinformation – about the hardships wrought by the floundering economy, high inflation and unchecked immigration.
Yet, the outcome of the election also mirrors a global desire for a change in status quo. A recent piece in The Financial Times ominously titled Democrats join 2024’s graveyard of incumbents pointed out that almost every incumbent government in the developed world – Britain, France and Japan, among others – that faced election this year had lost vote share.
Hindsight offers some clarity. In the aftermath of Covid-19, the lived experience of voters is one of high prices, supply-chain disruptions and unbridled immigration. Even if these problems weren’t caused by the incumbent in power, voters would not hesitate to vote the governing party out.
And such was the case for the Democratic Party – even if US President Joe Biden, by most indicators, had done a fairly good job managing the economy, with unemployment at the lowest in over half a century.
But much can also be said about how the Democrats appear to have lost touch with the working class, which account for the majority of voters, as socioeconomic and political forces, and voting trends, evolved over the years.
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And now, faced with an electorate deeply unhappy over their lived experience, it’s clear its more ideological messages no longer resonate.
This was demonstrated in a recent study by a PhD candidate from Columbia University. He found that the Democratic Party’s emphasis on “cultural” topics – crime, gun regulations, reproductive rights, education, LGBTQ rights, affirmative action and environmental issues – over economic issues was the main driver of voters’ “partisan realignment”.
In contrast, incoming president Donald Trump’s messages that played up bread-and-butter concerns and anxieties over the economy and immigration issues were what most voters, many of them working class, could relate to.
What might this mean for Singapore’s upcoming election?
While the US political system is clearly vastly different from Singapore’s, there are still relevant takeaways.
A key one is that by and large, voters are chiefly concerned about bread-and-butter issues and how government policies affect their lives and livelihoods, and probably less about “woke” priorities around, say, representation or social justice. Voters will also evaluate the government according to their lived experience, and their scorecard may not always align with what official data show.
Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party, and surely the opposition parties as well, seem to understand this at an innate level. Here, PAP continues to pull all stops to stay plugged in to ground sentiments, as it gears up for Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s first electoral outing since taking the top job in May.
Accordingly, PM Wong last week told local media that he knows cost of living remains a key concern for many, and that the government’s broad themes for Budget 2025 are: Singapore’s economic strategies, jobs security and social safety nets.
As voters remain focused on bread-and-butter issues, as they have over the decades, it would be no surprise if recent high-profile incidents involving current and former politicians – extramarital affairs, accusation of lies and taking bribes – end up having little, if any, effect on the polls.
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