Lim Tean: Surge of young voters supporting opposition very evident

Singapore – Opposition People’s Voice (PV) leader Lim Tean took to social media to highlight a few comments on the increase of young voters supporting alternative parties during the 2020 General Election.

On Sunday (June 12), Mr Tean shared an article with former People’s Action Party (PAP) Member of Parliament Inderjit Singh’s thoughts on the elections. Mr Singh, in a Facebook post the same day, noted that watching the elections from the sidelines allowed him to observe and understand the issues Singaporeans are concerned with and how they decided to vote.

On how the different segments voted, Mr Singh analysed that the group who most likely voted against the PAP was the younger generation, especially millennials. “They want to have a diversity of views; they want more contestation of ideas and are not content with one party just pushing their policies without enough debate,” he said. “They want to be more involved and don’t accept the bureaucratic style of the PAP government.”

Mr Singh also referred to the role of social media, which had a significant influence on the young voters. Regardless of new campaign rules where physical rallies were prohibited, the opposition parties made very good use of social media and online rallies to get their messages through and these resonated with the young voters, he noted.

In comparison, “the PAP online campaign was lacking, and it did not help that many PAP friendly sites who are likely PAP IBs were hitting below the belt and resorted to character assassination instead of having an intellectual argument of ideas and policies,” he said.

In response to Mr Singh’s reflections, Mr Tean agreed that the surge of young voters towards the opposition in the GE was “very evident and very satisfying”. He shared that during the last few days of the campaign, a great number of young voters came up to the PV team and admitted they were “going to revolt against the PAP and their tactics”. Mr Tean mentioned how character assassination would lead to the young voters getting turned off over time.

Members of the online community agreed that the younger generation was a force to be reckoned with.