ABSTRACT

Beginning in January 2020, the world has struggled to contain COVID-19 pandemic. Initially lauded as the “gold standard” for containment of the pandemic, Singapore was suddenly confronted with a massive outbreak of infection in the migrant worker dormitories. To date, migrant workers accounted for 95 percent of the almost 60,000 infected, while outside the dormitories infection was relatively well-contained and overall extremely low fatalities. As to be expected, “successful” containment of the spread of the viral infection should generate electoral support for the incumbent government, as in the case of South Korea in April 2020. Accordingly, the long-governing People’s Action Party had called an earlier election during the pandemic in anticipation of overwhelming electoral support. However, the relative success in infection containment within the national community produced the opposite electoral effect. The ruling party received the second-lowest popular votes in its uninterrupted history in government. This counter-intuitive outcome warrants plausible explanations.

摘要

从2020年1月开始，世界一直在努力遏制COVID-19大流行。最初被赞扬为遏制大流行的“黄金标准”，新加坡突然面对民工宿舍大规模爆发的感染。迄今为止，在近60,000名被感染者中，农民工占95％，而在宿舍以外，感染者则相对完备，总体死亡率极低。可以预期，“成功”地遏制病毒感染的传播将为现任政府提供选举支持，就像2020年4月的韩国那样。因此，历时长久的人民行动党要求提前举行大选在大流行期间，预期会有压倒性的选举支持。然而，在民族社区内遏制感染的相对成功产生了相反的选举效果。执政党在政府不间断的历史中获得了第二低的选票。这种违反直觉的结果值得进行合理的解释。