Disclaimer:
I am no politician nor statistician.
I am apolitical as well.
Whatever posted here is a series of googling and hoping that the figures are accurate.
I am just a lowly engineer and you can see my profile here.
Please do tell me to.change my numbers or remove my post should it offend you, and in what way are you offended. My purpose is to do some mathetical calculations and logical analysis.
My personal profile http://b3nchai.blogspot.com/2015/05/my-personal-profile.html
So i was inspired by a facebook post claiming that there is an increased in voters this elections, and it is due to "new citizens" that oppositions lost votes percentage.
Is it really true that the "new citizens" were to be blamed for the lackluster results of the Oppositions? Unfortunately the original poster removed his facebook posting already.
Hence I done some research of my own and here are my findings.
By the numbers
Referece
http://www.straitstimes.com/politics/ge2015-voter-turnout-at-9356-per-cent-improves-slightly-from-2011-record-low
http://www.eld.gov.sg/pressrelease/ParE2011/2011_05_11%20Press%20release%20on%20total%20voter%20turnout.pdf
http://www.singapore-elections.com/general-election/2011/
With the basic numbers, it is obvious that oppositions actually lost a lot of support in terms of number of voters, even though they have contested in Tanjong Pagar GRC for GE2015. An approximate of 800k voters in GE2011 compared to 680k voters in GE2015. Its a good 120k voters gone.
(i have classified all as oppositions, even though there are some who are independent like HHH and the bukit batok guy, just for simplicity sake)
If the oppositions supporters numbers are similar, we could have blamed the swing on first time voters. But nope, the oppositions lose supporters, and a huge chunk of it, despite having 25,943 in Tanjong Pagar GRC added to their vote count. We are not even talking about percentage. Why have 120k supporters switched sides?
There are also an increment of ~110k voters. Some crazy people claimed that it is due to influx of "new citizens". But from what I found out, it doesn't seemed to be the case.
The increment in electorate is also mostly birth citizen as stated below.
Citizen or "New Citizen" ?
Death of citizen
By using an average of 18k for death rates, 18k x 5(2011-2015)=90k (it should be lesser since the year in not fully over)
Do note that there is only information from 2011 to 2013 currently. So it is a simple assumption.
Citizen by birth
Eligible first time birth citizen (1990-1993)
In GE2011, people born in 1990 are not eligible as they need to be 21 at 1Jan 2011.
Similarly, in GE 2015, 1994 will not be eligible.
Hence, Birth Citizens eligible are 51,142+ 49,114+ 49,402+ 50,225 = 199,883
Total expected Delta
200k-90k=110k new voters in GE2015
Difference in electorate number: 112,053(between GE2011 and GE2015)
Of course, we cannot count a perfect number as we have not included people who have migrated, ineligible voters who gave up their voting rights and such. But with these numbers, we can comfortably say that it is not "new citizens" that swing the vote in favor of PAP.
Why would i have such a conclusion?
If we have approximately 110k new voters expected due to birth Singaporean being eligible to vote, and there are an increment of 112k of new voters. A naive calculation would be to say that "new citizens" are only approximately 2k in numbers.
To negate the issues of first time voters who should be excluded from this 110k voters due to migration and being ineligible due to various reasons, let's drop the number by 20k and give this 20k to "new citizen"
Even with 22k "new citizen", it constitute to approximately less than 1% of the eligible electorates for new voters.
So seriously? "New citizen" swing votes?
i disagree.
Reference
http://www.ica.gov.sg/data/resources/docs/Media%20Releases/SDB/Annual%20RBD%20Report_2013.pdf
Is it really true that the "new citizens" were to be blamed for the lackluster results of the Oppositions? Unfortunately the original poster removed his facebook posting already.
Hence I done some research of my own and here are my findings.
By the numbers
Referece
http://www.straitstimes.com/politics/ge2015-voter-turnout-at-9356-per-cent-improves-slightly-from-2011-record-low
http://www.eld.gov.sg/pressrelease/ParE2011/2011_05_11%20Press%20release%20on%20total%20voter%20turnout.pdf
http://www.singapore-elections.com/general-election/2011/
With the basic numbers, it is obvious that oppositions actually lost a lot of support in terms of number of voters, even though they have contested in Tanjong Pagar GRC for GE2015. An approximate of 800k voters in GE2011 compared to 680k voters in GE2015. Its a good 120k voters gone.
(i have classified all as oppositions, even though there are some who are independent like HHH and the bukit batok guy, just for simplicity sake)
If the oppositions supporters numbers are similar, we could have blamed the swing on first time voters. But nope, the oppositions lose supporters, and a huge chunk of it, despite having 25,943 in Tanjong Pagar GRC added to their vote count. We are not even talking about percentage. Why have 120k supporters switched sides?
There are also an increment of ~110k voters. Some crazy people claimed that it is due to influx of "new citizens". But from what I found out, it doesn't seemed to be the case.
The increment in electorate is also mostly birth citizen as stated below.
Citizen or "New Citizen" ?
Death of citizen
By using an average of 18k for death rates, 18k x 5(2011-2015)=90k (it should be lesser since the year in not fully over)
Do note that there is only information from 2011 to 2013 currently. So it is a simple assumption.
Citizen by birth
Eligible first time birth citizen (1990-1993)
In GE2011, people born in 1990 are not eligible as they need to be 21 at 1Jan 2011.
Similarly, in GE 2015, 1994 will not be eligible.
Hence, Birth Citizens eligible are 51,142+ 49,114+ 49,402+ 50,225 = 199,883
Total expected Delta
200k-90k=110k new voters in GE2015
Difference in electorate number: 112,053(between GE2011 and GE2015)
Of course, we cannot count a perfect number as we have not included people who have migrated, ineligible voters who gave up their voting rights and such. But with these numbers, we can comfortably say that it is not "new citizens" that swing the vote in favor of PAP.
Why would i have such a conclusion?
If we have approximately 110k new voters expected due to birth Singaporean being eligible to vote, and there are an increment of 112k of new voters. A naive calculation would be to say that "new citizens" are only approximately 2k in numbers.
To negate the issues of first time voters who should be excluded from this 110k voters due to migration and being ineligible due to various reasons, let's drop the number by 20k and give this 20k to "new citizen"
Even with 22k "new citizen", it constitute to approximately less than 1% of the eligible electorates for new voters.
So seriously? "New citizen" swing votes?
i disagree.
Reference
http://www.ica.gov.sg/data/resources/docs/Media%20Releases/SDB/Annual%20RBD%20Report_2013.pdf
In conclusion...
I get it that we are afraid that "new citizens" will cause social problems for us. But are they a great cause of concern that will cost the oppositions votes?
Please do not be xenophobic and blame everything on the "new citizens"
The Opposition lose a lot of votes, and there are various stuffs that could be a contributing factors.
If you say voters became humji, then why would those 120k voted for opposition last election and decided to be hum this time?
Unless all 90k who passed away are opposition voters, all 150k+ who didnt vote are opposition voters or all 47k rejected votes also belonged to opposition voters, then it might be a different story.
Regards
Benjamin Chai
No comments:
Post a Comment