SINGAPORE, Sept 11 – According to the Elections Department, there were more than two million Singaporeans have voted in the country’s general election which the voting station was conducted from 8am to 8pm today. For the first time in this GE, the department will be making public the results of sample counts, once the counting of ballots begins.
The sample count will be carried out at the start of the counting process at each of the 163 counting centres throughout the city state. The first sample counts are expected in less than an hour of the close of polls. A final result wasn’t expected until early Saturday in Singapore, where voting is mandatory for those aged 21 and over.
Up to 2.46 million people in the city-state are eligible to vote by 8pm in the first general election since independence in 1965, in which every single seat is being contested. Prime Minister and People’s Action Party (PAP) secretary-general Lee Hsien Loong and wife, Ho Ching, voted at the Alexandra Primary School in Tanjong Pagar today.
Tanjong Pagar, a stronghold of the PAP during the years of Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, who died in March this year, is now being contested. A total of 4,868 Singaporeans overseas are also eligible to vote. They had to cast their ballots by Thursday.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is hoping to reverse a setback at the 2011 election, when his party received a record-low 60.1% share of the popular vote, though it held on to 81 of the then 87 parliamentary seats. Almost no one thinks that the PAP which led by Mr. Lee was risks to losing the election due to many political analysts agree that the party’s hold on power is softening as economic growth slows.
