Singapore experienced extensive electoral redistricting six weeks before polling day on May 3, 2025. Were the electoral boundary changes “gerrymandering in plain sight” as claimed by an opposition leader? And if so, did the People’s Action Party (PAP) benefit from the redistricting and malapportionment to maintain its legislative supermajority? This critical perspective finds that gerrymandering methods such as “packing,” “cracking,” and “stacking” were used in the redistricting of many new and altered constituencies. Based on the limited geospatial and electoral data available, the findings also show that the PAP gained in vote shares in all the altered and newly created group and single-member constituencies, as compared to the opposition parties, since the last general elections. While malapportionment and electoral disproportionality have both improved, creating more single-member seats and removing the larger five-member group constituencies would achieve fairer apportionment and more equal representation of voters. Electoral reform would remove any concerns that the PAP won based on an unfair advantage.
Netina Tan (Wed,) studied this question.