Parliamentary Elections, 3 May 2025

Singapore held general elections on 3 May 2025, in which 93 seats of the 104-seat unicameral parliament were contested. New MPs were elected from 15 single-seat and 18 multi-seat constituencies (known as group representation constituencies), each of which elected a list of three to six members by plurality vote. These lists normally include at least one member from a designated minority group. Elected candidates are to serve a five-year tenure. In principle, the nine other members are appointed by the President for a term of two and a half years (IFES 2025). Singapore has compulsory voting with a 50 Singapore dollar fee for failing voting without a valid reason (Teo 2025). 

The responsible electoral management body is the Elections Department of Singapore (ELD) which is composed of a registration officer, a returning officer, and enough assistant registration officers as deemed necessary by the Prime Minister, who appoints them. The Registration Officer and the Returning Officer may also appoint any number of clerks and interpreters that may be necessary (Singapore 1954 rev. 2020).

Singapore’s electoral timeline is among the shortest of parliamentary democracies. According to the law, only nine days of official campaigning are required between nominations and polling day, with minimal notice of the dissolution of Parliament. During the 2025 general elections, the full cycle lasted three weeks. Such a short timeline poses challenges, especially for smaller or newer opposition parties; the incumbent The People's Action Party (PAP) benefits from year-round constituency engagement, extensive party infrastructure, and a broad media reach (Edelman 2025). During the campaign, there were allegations of under-aged workers (children) being used to distribute flyers (Online Citizen 2025). 

Disinformation featured in the run-up to polling, with bots posting false reports and biased opinions on Facebook targeting both the ruling PAP and opposition Workers’ Party (WP). A total of 409 instances of suspicious posts and comments from 149 unique profiles were tracked on 20 April 2025. Out of a total of 3,428 comments, about 47 per cent were flagged as originating from suspicious or fake accounts (Ng 2025). Disinformation included digitally generated content in violation of 2024 regulations (see below), with the former president Halimah Yacob reporting a deepfake video purporting to show her making negative remarks about the government (Malay Mail 2025a). 

Some female candidates faced catcalling at the Workers’ Party rally. Moreover, sexist and racist online posts that shifted attention from candidates’ political roles to their physical appearance were observed and condemned by equalities advocates in the run-up to the elections (Malay Mail 2025c). 

By 29 April more than 900 fake Facebook accounts had posted over 5,000 coordinated, inauthentic comments—within a day of Singapore’s government announcing publicly that foreign online interference was ongoing. Channel News Asia’s analysis found that 58 per cent of nearly 9,000 comments were from fake or suspected fake accounts (Mahmud 2025). Meanwhile a Malaysian politician—also treasurer of a non-profit, Population Association of Singapore (PAS)—Datuk Iskandar Abdul Samad, rejected accusations of attempting to influence the election through his Facebook postings or being linked to the WP (Malay Mail 2025b). 

Regarding accessibility, wheelchairs belonging to the Elections Department were criminally damaged at two polling stations, though apparently not with political motives (Lim 2025b). In 2023, Singapore had piloted special polling stations at 31 nursing homes for those with mobility issues, with mobile voting teams available to bedridden residents. 4,087 voters used these channels but they were withdrawn for the 2025 elections, by announcement on 15 October 2024 (Ang 2024). 

The ruling PAP secured 87 of 97 seats and 65.6 per cent of the vote, retaining its supermajority, while the Workers’ Party held on to its 10 seats. Voter turnout was 92.5 per cent, a decrease compared to 95.8 per cent in 2020 (International IDEA n.d.). 32 women (32.3 per cent) were elected to parliament, up from 29 (29.6%) in the last Congress (IPU n.d.). 

Innovations

In October 2024 the government passed a law prohibiting the publication of digitally generated and/or manipulated content during elections in October 2024. The law applies to online election advertising that depicts people who are running as candidates, and is in  effect from the issue of the election writ until the close of polling (Lim 2025a).

Singapore redrew electoral boundaries, adding more parliamentary seats in the 2025 electoral cycle (Iau and Lim 2025). These are the first extensive electoral boundary changes in the country and have been criticized as political gerrymandering by some commentators (Bin Yahya 2025).