SINGAPORE – About 76 per cent of overseas Singaporeans voted for Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam as their new president, a slightly higher proportion than voters in Singapore.
The President-elect, 66, won 70.4 per cent of the valid ballots cast by local voters on Sept 1.
After the inclusion of overseas votes, which were counted on Tuesday at the counting centre at the Elections Department (ELD), the total number of votes cast for the 2023 Presidential Election is 2,534,711, including rejected votes. This makes up 93.55 per cent of the 2,709,407 registered electors for this election, said ELD on Tuesday.
There were a total of 6,649 registered overseas voters, of whom 2,454 turned up to vote in person at the polling stations in Beijing, Canberra, Dubai, Hong Kong, London, New York, San Francisco, Shanghai, Tokyo and Washington.
Among registered overseas voters, some 3,432 had registered to vote by post. Of this group, 2,997 went on to download their postal ballots. This was the first time overseas postal voting was used in an election. But only 1,345 mailed ballots were received by ELD by the deadline of Sept 11 and accepted for counting.
The number of overseas votes for Mr Tharman is 2,834 (76.16 per cent), while presidential candidates Ng Kok Song and Tan Kin Lian received 595 votes (15.99 per cent) and 292 votes (7.85 per cent), respectively.
These overseas votes bump up the number of total valid votes for all three candidates to 2,484,481.
In the early hours of Sept 2, Mr Tharman scored a landslide win with 70.4 per cent of the vote, while Mr Ng and Mr Tan, who are both 75, received 15.72 per cent and 13.88 per cent, respectively.
Mr Tharman will be sworn in as president at the Istana on Thursday.
Voters say Tharman’s landslide victory reflects ‘mature and thoughtful’ electorate
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