GE2025: Maximum spending in election campaign raised to $5 per voter to account for inflation

SINGAPORE - Candidates in the upcoming general election can spend a maximum of $5 for each registered voter,

up from $4 previously.

This change is to account for inflation, the Elections Department (ELD) said on March 27. The last time the limit was revised was in 2015.

“If the candidate is contesting as part of a group of candidates nominated for an election in a GRC, the maximum spending limit is $5 per elector on the register for that GRC divided by the number of candidates in the group nominated for that election,” the department added.

The law imposes a ceiling on the amount that a candidate contesting an election can spend. This is to ensure a level playing field and to prevent “money politics”, ELD said.

Spending more than the maximum amount is against the law.

In 2015, the spending limit was raised from $3.50 to $4 per voter to account for inflation, ELD said at that time. The limit remained unchanged in the 2020 General Election.

In GE2020, candidates spent

more than $9 million

on campaigning, with the bulk going towards posters, banners, fliers and online advertisements.

At that election, the PAP was the biggest spender, with $2.63 per voter, followed by WP at $1.21 and PSP at $1.19.

ELD on March 27 said President Tharman Shanmugaratnam has also designated the group representation constituencies where at least one of the candidates standing for election must be a person belonging to either the Malay community, or Indian or other minority communities.

The GRCs where at least one of the candidates in each group must be someone from the Malay community are:

The GRCs where at least one of the candidates in each group must be someone from the Indian or other minority communities are:

The GRCs requiring at least one candidate from the Malay community remained unchanged from GE2020.

Marine Parade GRC, however, is being renamed Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC with some boundary changes, while the new Pasir Ris-Changi GRC will take in parts of the current Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC, among other revisions.

The GRCs needing at least one candidate who is Indian or from another minority group stayed largely the same as in GE2020, save the addition of the new Punggol GRC.

Large parts of the current Jurong and West Coast GRCs, where this rule was imposed, will form part of the new Jurong East-Bukit Batok and West Coast-Jurong West GRCs, respectively.

The GRC scheme was introduced in 1988 to ensure multiracial representation in Parliament. Each GRC must have at least one MP from a minority community.

There will be

18 GRCs at the coming polls

, up from 17 now.

The next general election must be held by November, but most political observers believe Singaporeans will head to the polls by mid-year.

Some 2,758,095 people are eligible to vote in the next election, an increase of 104,153 eligible voters since the rolls were last updated in April 2020.