If you're an impatient Singaporean who wants to sleep early tonight, here's some good news: we will roughly know the results of the GE2015 even before all the votes are counted later.

The Elections Department (ELD) announced on Sep 2 that it will make public the results of sample counts for each of the 16 GRCs and 13 SMCs soon after polling stations close at 8pm today.

We answer five key questions regarding GE2015 sample count: 

1. What is a sample count?

A counting assistant picks up a random bundle of 100 ballot papers (in front of the candidates and counting agents).

The votes will be added up, with weightage given to account for the difference in the number of votes cast at each polling station.

For instance, if one ward in six-member Ang Mo Kio GRC have more residents than other wards, more weightage will be given to that constituency.

2. How zhun is a sample count?

Statistician-speak: It has a 95 per cent confidence level.

Human-speak: The results has a margin of error of +/- 4 per cent. This means we wouldn't really know which party wins if Party A gets 52 per cent of the sample votes, and Party B gets 48 per cent of the sample votes.

It also doesn't mean that the ELD is 95 per cent confident that the sample count is correct.

3. Why is there a sample count this time? 

It helps to prevent speculation and misinformation from unofficial sources while counting is underway, before counting is completed and the final election results are announced.

4. Has the ELD done this before? How do we know it's zhun?

Yes. Previous counts were conducted in the 2011 presidential election, the 2012 Hougang by-election and the 2013 Punggol East by-election.

But this GE will be the first time that sample counts are made public.

5. Will Mothership.sg be sharing the sample count results?

We will be continuously camping on the ELD website from 8pm onwards and share the results on our microsite as soon as we have them.

Click here to go to our GE2015 microsite for the juiciest election-related news on Mothership.sg.

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