The Progress Singapore Party, Reform Party, and People's Action Party look set to bang heads in a three-cornered fight in West Coast GRC this coming general election.

The two opposition parties have indicated their interest in running in the same constituency, a vote-splitting move likely to favour the PAP incumbent.

West Coast GRC is currently held by the PAP team led by Minister for Communications and Information S. Iswaran.

The four-person constituency has been upgraded to a five-person one.

RP ran in West Coast GRC in 2011 and 2015.

They lost in both elections polling 33.34 per cent and 21.43 per cent of the vote respectively.

The latest contender, PSP, is fielding a team led by Tan Cheng Bock, who used to hail from the PAP.

Opposition vote splitting

Past elections have shown that multi-cornered fights are not good for the opposition.

If there is a third party, the tendency is for the one who received the least votes to lose the election deposit.

This has happened in the Bukit Batok, MacPherson and Radin Mas SMC contests in 2015.

In Bukit Batok SMC, for example, the PAP candidate David Ong received 72.99 per cent of the vote.

His opponents were the Singapore Democratic Party's (SDP) Sadasivam Veriyah who got 26.4 per cent and independent Samir Salim Neji who received 0.6 per cent of the vote.

Samir Salim forfeited his S$14,500 election deposit.

The same thing happened in Radin Mas SMC's three-cornered fight in 2015 that resulted in independent candidate Han Hui Hui forfeiting her S$14,500 election deposit.

This was after she received 10.04 percent, or 2,629, of votes.

The threshold for keeping one's election deposit is to receive at least 12.5 percent of votes cast.

Not all three-cornered fights are wild dice-rolling exercises in getting lucky.

The increased number of 12 Non-Constituency MP (NCMP) seats up for grabs this GE could entice some parties to run in constituencies where the incumbent PAP is deemed as less popular.

NCMP seats are awarded to the losers of the election who secured the highest proportion of votes.

Background

Reform Party

RP secretary-general Kenneth Jeyaretnam introduced six candidates during a bizarre technical-difficulties-ridden livestream on Facebook on June 15, where the candidates were unveiled under a World of Warcraft game stream.

Three of them are fresh faces taking part in their first electoral contest: They are Gurdev Singh, 55, Mahaboob Batcha, 52, and Charles Yeo, 30.

But this makes RP the first party to unveil their candidates.

Though RP did not specify where the different candidates unveiled would be fielded, the other three introduced were part of the five-person team led by Jeyaretnam that contested West Coast GRC at the last election.

They are party chairman Andy Zhu, 37, who is a marketing director at a real estate agency; human resources practitioner Darren Soh, 52; and Noraini Yunus, 52, who works in telemarketing.

RP is also intending on fielding candidates in Ang Mo Kio GRC, Radin Mas and Yio Chu Kang.

Progress Singapore Party

This will be the first contest for the recently formed PSP, with its chief Tan leading the team.

Tan's eyeing of the GRC is due to his past presence in the area when he served constituents there as its PAP MP.

For six consecutive terms, Tan was the former MP of Ayer Rajah SMC, which was absorbed into West Coast GRC in 2006.

PSP assistant secretary-general Leong Mun Wai said four of the five PSP candidates have been selected to run in West Coast GRC.

The four confirmed names are secretary-general Tan, vice-chairman Hazel Poa, and members Nadarajah Loganathan and Jeffrey Khoo.

The fifth West Coast team seat looks likely to be filled by Leong.

The other alternative is Abas Kasmani, a workplace safety senior trainer.

Leong also said PSP looks likely to give up on Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC and will contest fewer seats than initially announced.