Vote Tactically for Tan Jee Say to defeat Tony Tan

Under the 'first past the post' (FPTP) system that we have for the Presidential Election, the winning candidate in the ‘four-horse’ race could emerge winner with less than 50% of the valid votes.

This is unlike the 'fairer' supplementary or alternate voting system practiced in some elections in Europe, whereby voters express a first choice as well as second and third choices. If no candidate receives 50% of first choice votes, the bottom candidate is removed and votes for that candidate are re-assigned to the remaining candidates based on their second choices. This continues until a candidate emerges with 50% of the valid votes.

In fact, the fielding of three non-establishment-backed candidates in this Presidential Election (Tan Cheng Bock, Tan Kin Lian and Tan Jee Say) has split the majority votes against the establishment’s preferred candidate (Tony Tan).

To examine further, below is a constructed distribution of the electorate by their general characteristics and their likely voting patterns.

Under the FPTP system that we are in, it is likely that Tony Tan would emerge the winner with 40% of the votes coming from the electorate group which regularly votes for the PAP or the establishment by default.

If we were to reassign the votes for TKL, it is likely that TCB and TJS will share the spoils, with Tony Tan still receiving only 40% of the votes.

In the final round, we would come down to the top two candidates and the votes for the 3rd-placed TCB reassigned.

It is only in a direct face-off, that a non-establishment candidate Tan Jee Say could emerge the winner.

Thus in this four-horse race, voters should assess which two candidates are frontrunners — that is, most likely to win — and to vote for the preferred one of those two, even if a third candidate is preferred over.

In a multi-conrned fight under the FPTP system, a vote for any candidate other than the top two will likely be "wasted" and has no impact on the final result.

Edmund Khor