GE2025: PM Wong leads PAP team to resounding victory in Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC with 73.46% of votes
This is his first general election as premier; votes garnered jump 10 points from 2020 poll
[SINGAPORE] The People’s Action Party (PAP) team in Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC – helmed by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong – has won the division again with a solid 73.46 per cent of the votes, up more than 10 points from the 63.18 per cent win in 2020.
The team secured 80,890 votes. The Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) came in at 26.54 per cent, with 29,220 votes. There were 110,110 valid votes cast and 1,664 rejected votes.
PM Wong’s team comprised Senior Minister of State for Defence and Manpower Zaqy Mohamad, as well as Alex Yam and Hany Soh.
The SDP slate wasmade up of full-time caregiver Gigene Wong, theatre director Alec Tok, news site founder Ariffin Sha and party stalwart Jufri Salim.
This election witnessed the parties’ third showdown in the Group Representation Constituency (GRC), with straight fights between the PAP and SDP since the constituency’s formation in 2015. Its boundaries remain unchanged in the latest election.
While PM Wong has stood in Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC in previous polls, this election marks the first time he is leading the PAP’s team there as prime minister and secretary-general of the PAP.
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The 73.46 per cent of votes garnered by PM Wong’s team was higher than the 71.91 per cent Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s team chalked up in the 2020 General Election (GE) when the latter was prime minister. Despite then PM Lee’s robust showing, it was down from the 78.64 per cent scored by his team in GE2015.
Historically, in every prime minister’s first election after taking office, the overall vote share of the PAP has dropped compared to the preceding GE.
This was the case in GE1991 after Goh Chok Tong became prime minister in 1990, with the PAP vote share sliding 2.2 percentage points; as well as in GE2006 after Lee Hsien Loong succeeded him in 2004, where the PAP’s vote share dropped 8.7 percentage points.
But PM Wong bucked the trend. Overall, the PAP’s vote share came up to 65.57 per cent, higher than the 61.24 per cent secured by the ruling party in the last election.
At the close of the polls, a total of 2,429,281 votes were cast in Singapore, inclusive of 42,829 rejected votes. This was 92.47 per cent of the 2,627,026 registered electors in all contested electoral divisions.
On the campaign trail, PM Wong repeatedly appealed to voters to choose the best team to take the country forward in a changed world. Voting in the opposition would weaken the government, he argued.
Amid global tensions, the nation needs leaders who have built relationships with their foreign counterparts, to advocate for Singapore, he added.
SDP’s Ariffin had noted that some have dubbed his team the “suicide squad” for choosing to face off against the prime minister’s team. What matters in GE2025 is not just who the winner is, but the margin of victory, he said, noting that the smaller a PAP win-margin, the better the people would be served.
His teammate Dr Wong gained notoriety after going off script with a racial slur against Ariffin and mispronouncing his name as “elephant”. She and party leader Chee Soon Juan apologised in later speeches. Dr Wong did not speak at any subsequent rallies.
PAP also bags Sembawang GRC
The PAP also kept Sembawang GRC in the constituency’s first three-cornered fight. The incumbent beat out both SDP and the National Solidarity Party (NSP), with 83,946 votes, or 67.75 per cent.
The team consisted of Health Minister Ong Ye Kung, backbenchers Vikram Nair and Mariam Jaafar, and new faces Gabriel Lam, the chief operating officer of Shalom International Movers, and Ng Shi Xuan, the director of battery company Powermark Battery & Hardware Trading.
A total of 123,900 valid votes were cast. There were 1,846 rejected votes.
The SDP team, made up of party vice-chairman Bryan Lim, treasurer Surayah Akbar, deputy head of policy James Gomez, as well as members Damanhuri Abas and Alfred Tan, garnered the second-largest vote share in the GRC, at 29.93 per cent.
NSP, led by party chief Spencer Ng and comprising Raiyian Chia, Verina Ong, Lee Wei and Yadzeth Hairis, received 2.32 per cent of valid votes.
Sembawang GRC’s boundaries have changed from GE2020, with polling districts carved out to form a new Sembawang West SMC. In the previous GE, the PAP won with 67.29 per cent of the votes, against NSP.
The GRC is one of five GRCs and two SMCs that saw multi-cornered fights in this election. The three-way fight occurred after talks between NSP and SDP failed. NSP contested Sembawang GRC in the last two elections, while SDP faced off with the PAP in Sembawang GRC in GE2011 and GE2006.
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