Overall, the PAP’s 69.86 per cent share of the popular vote was the highest since 2001’s landslide victory of 75.3 per cent – a year when only a third of eligible voters actually voted due to walkovers, as compared to this General Election where all 89 seats were contested.
This is also a 9.72 percentage-point upswing from its 60.14 per cent share of the overall votes in 2011.
In East Coast, the GRC where the PAP had its narrowest win in 2011 with 54.8 per cent, the ruling party extended its vote-share to 60.73 per cent against the WP’s ‘B’ team.
Single seat wards that were carved out of GRCs for this election also saw convincing wins for the PAP. In Bukit Batok for instance, Mr David Ong took 72.99 per cent of the votes in a three-cornered fight. In Fengshan, Ms Cheryl Chan – the first new face the PAP has ever fielded in a new SMC – received 57.52 per cent of the votes.
MacPherson incumbent Tin Pei Ling garnered 65.58 per cent of the votes against opposition from the WP and National Solidarity Party.
For the first time, Singaporeans got an early indication of the final results with the public release of the sample count results, from about 9.30pm.
As the final results rolled in, confirming the initial picture painted by the sample count results of a massive swing in votes towards the PAP, observers, candidates and opposition parties scrambled to take stock of the results, which most described as a massive “national swing” to the PAP.