WP's strategy clicks into place, even without new wins at GE2025

Straits Times

09-05-2025

WP candidates taking the stage before the announcement of the election results on May 4. ST PHOTO: MARK CHEONG
Commentary WP's strategy clicks into place, even without new wins at GE2025
SINGAPORE — For a hot minute on Nomination Day, WP chief Pritam Singh hopped on a bus bound for Yusof Ishak Secondary School – the nomination centre for East Coast and Punggol GRCs – teasing what looked like a bold departure from the party's Aljunied stronghold to conquer new ground.
But the Leader of the Opposition would then alight, and subsequently board another bus bound for Poi Ching School, the nomination centre for Aljunied GRC, where he would eventually contest.
If he had left with the first bus, things might have panned out differently at the polls on May 3, with the WP potentially winning more seats instead of retaining its existing 10.
'In hindsight, everybody is a master,' Mr Singh himself said on May 4 when asked how he would have conducted things differently.
Political observers said the way the WP played its cards this general election was ambitious and conservative in equal parts – a paradoxical mix of bold manoeuvres and calculated restraint that ultimately delivered mixed results, offering both reason to celebrate and cause for regret.
Conservative, because the party's top brass – Mr Singh and chairwoman Sylvia Lim – stayed put in their Aljunied 'home base' along with head of policy research Gerald Giam, choosing only to swing vice-chair Faisal Manap out to Tampines GRC.
Ambitious, as the WP appeared to have deployed its candidates in a way that gave it the best possible chance to win big – all 26 of the 97 seats it was contesting, which would have been a leap towards its medium-term goal of securing a third of Parliament from the 10 seats it held.
Several aspects of its campaign hinted at this game plan to chip away at the PAP's vote share uniformly across all eight battlegrounds where the 26 were fielded.
One, the WP spread the deployment of its higher-profile first-time candidates – such as Senior Counsel Harpreet Singh, former Institute of Mental Health director Ong Lue Ping, and start-up co-founder Michael Thng – across Tampines and Punggol GRCs, not prioritising either one.
NTU political scientist Walid Jumblatt Abdullah opined that had the WP fielded Mr Harpreet Singh in Tampines alongside Mr Faisal, it 'would have been a done deal'. But Mr Harpreet Singh was fielded in Punggol, while Dr Ong and Mr Thng were fielded in Tampines alongside Mr Faisal.
The allocation of its most appealing candidates to the two GRCs – both areas where the WP had never ventured in past elections – led to the perception that the party had deprioritised East Coast GRC, where it had come close to winning after two decades of it chipping away at the PAP's majority.
The likely reality is that WP's strategy to win all 26 seats had necessitated the allocation of its chips in areas where fresh party buy-in was needed the most.
Instead of fielding a line-up of higher-profile candidates to move East Coast voters, the party likely thought that its two decades of groundwork and brand premium would come through and flip the group representation constituency blue in this election, with former Non-Constituency MP Yee Jenn Jong as the 'party heavyweight' at the helm.
WP's move to cede Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC – where its members and volunteers had poured hundreds of hours over the past five years sustaining a ground presence after its 2015 and 2020 electoral bids, only for it to end in a walkover – made greater sense if the plan was to win 26 seats.
Past electoral results have shown that the former Marine Parade GRC was a tough ground to crack. The absorption of MacPherson SMC further altered the battleground this time, and the WP likely assessed that its chances of winning had diminished.
Instead of fielding its reserve pool of candidates there, concentrating its firepower elsewhere allowed the WP to put forward the message that its slate of 26 was the best the party has ever convened, and Singaporeans should seize the opportunity to shore up the opposition bench in Parliament.
As the days bore out, the WP leaders repeated this message in more than a few ways: The 26 present a 'serious choice' against PAP backbenchers, Mr Pritam Singh said. Even if Singaporeans vote in all 26, the ratio of WP MPs to PAP MPs will be only about two or three to nine, he said in another setting.
At the final rally before Polling Day, Ms Lim said: 'If these candidates do not get elected this time, there may be no next time.'
WP also made a strong push for the single seats of Jalan Kayu and Tampines Changkat, with Mr Pritam Singh taking aim at the NTUC's close relationship with the PAP. Labour chief Ng Chee Meng and NTUC assistant secretary-general Desmond Choo were PAP contenders in the two SMCs.
At one rally, the WP chief called the labour movement a 'guaranteed trampoline' for losing PAP candidates, saying Mr Ng and Mr Choo would continue helping workers even if they were not elected.
The thinking behind WP spreading its 14 new faces so evenly across its eight battlegrounds – Aljunied, Sengkang, Tampines, Punggol, East Coast, Hougang, Jalan Kayu and Tampines Changkat – was likely not to just win one or two more constituencies, but to take them all.
Pulling away from the rest
In the end, the WP's cautious yet ambitious campaign led to the opposition party solidifying its grip on its existing seats, while gaining a foothold in adjacent constituencies .
By keeping its leaders in the Aljunied safe harbour, the WP consolidated its base. The party fared better in two of the three constituencies it held and maintained status quo in the third.
It polled 56.31 per cent in Sengkang GRC, improving on the 2020 result by 4.2 percentage points, while its Hougang score inched up almost one percentage point to hit 62.17 per cent.
The WP also garnered 59.68 per cent of the vote in Aljunied, largely unchanged from its 59.95 per cent result in 2020 – allaying fears that Mr Pritam Singh's court trial over two charges of lying to a parliamentary committee could factor at the polls.
These results suggest that once constituencies turn blue, the ground is likely to stay blue.
The WP's ambitious streak saw it gain a foothold in several new territories contiguous to the three it holds, though the party ultimately walked away empty-handed from its drive to capture multiple new constituencies.
Zooming out, WP ran a considerably larger campaign in 2025 than it did in 2020, covering 32.8 per cent more voters. Yet, the expansion came without making a dent to its vote share, which dipped slightly from 50.49 per cent in 2020 to the current 50.04 per cent.
Safe to say, today's WP is no longer the party it was a decade ago, when it was still finding its footing.
Before the 2020 election, the WP's popular vote share had fluctuated more widely between 38.4 per cent and 46.6 per cent. It is now clearly a head above the rest of the opposition parties.
NUS economist and former Nominated MP Ivan Png's statistical analysis further confirms this.
In his bid to figure out how far ahead the support for the three top opposition parties of 2020 are from that of the other opposition parties, he found that the average WP candidate polled 25.9 percentage points higher in 2025, compared with 2006 when its lead was much smaller, at 3.4 percentage points.
This shows that the WP premium has grown, and the party has pulled away from the rest of the opposition pack .
It also reflects that even as more voters threw their support behind the ruling party at the election, they also wanted a continued and stable opposition presence in Parliament, with the WP securing a firm place in Singapore's evolving political landscape.
Said Singapore Management University's Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan: 'Voters signalled that a firm mandate for the PAP was not at all at odds with a more vibrant political system characterised by a credible and responsible opposition.'
'That the WP maintained its ground despite its controversies in the past five years is a reflection of the niche it now occupies in Singapore's political firmament,' he added.
Playing the long game
All these provide the context to former Hougang MP Png Eng Huat's sanguine message to the WP on May 4.
He wrote in a Facebook post: 'The WP has planted the seeds in this GE. I look forward to a well-earned harvest for the new generation in the coming years. This is a fitting time to close an old book and start a new one. Congratulations to the Workers' Party and godspeed.'
Asked about it, he told The Straits Times the 'old book' refers to an old order where the party leaned towards making politically expedient moves that relied too much on party figureheads at the expense of greener hands. This meant it ended up poorer in terms of experience and exposure.
'Party figureheads are important but it can't be more important than party renewal,' he told ST.
If Mr Png's words are anything to go by, the book that the WP is writing next is about giving its next generation of leaders enough room to come into their own, instead of just focusing on securing wins.
Lending weight to this theory was the decision to field 33-year-old former disputes lawyer and newcomer Andre Low in Jalan Kayu SMC, where he was given the chance to hold his own against Mr Ng, a 56-year-old former minister, and earn his political chops in the process.
Institute of Policy Studies senior research fellow Gillian Koh picked this up as well, giving her take that the way its chips were played showed that the WP was 'comfortable with playing the long game'.
They are good choices that set the stage for 'more organic growth' and 'more robust connection' between the newbies and the areas they are entrusted with, she said.
In an interview with ST on April 18, Mr Low said the party has started working at trimming its 'key man risk' – having all expertise and knowledge centred around key individuals – and establishing a stronger party machinery.
'I do think that, in a good way, we have gotten to a place as a party where it's not down to the individual anymore. Some of us can step away, if life comes into the picture, but we are mature enough now that the cause will keep going, and people will come in,' he said.
Prof Tan said the buzz and excitement generated by the 14 WP new faces this time round stand them in good stead in the next general election, where the stakes, given 2025's fruitless run, would be higher.
For its goal of one-third of Parliament seats to 'still be within the ballpark of realism for its current leaders', the party should double its seat count by the end of the decade, he noted.
Dr Koh said the WP's moderate tactics, grounded policy proposals, and fresh-faced candidates are likely to attract more voters to its brand in the years ahead.
Singapore is on its way to a ' 1½- party system' , where the opposition does not yet present itself to be a shadow government but is a steady presence to hold the dominant party to account, she added.
'I think (the WP leaders) read the room correctly,' she said, pointing to how voters want credible opposition candidates on the ballot. WP has worked towards 'high averages with three or four new stars' fielded in teams, she added.
But whether the party can field good candidates in the same constituencies at the next election, and also introduce a fresh batch of credible newcomers, remains to be seen, Dr Koh said.
Another question mark is whether it will have sufficient resources to scale up and contest in more than a third of the seats, she added.
Wong Pei Ting is a correspondent at The Straits Times. She covers politics and social affairs.
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