Broadcast speeches by political parties were aired on TV on July 2.

The parties include the People's Action Party (PAP), Workers' Party (WP), Progress Singapore Party (PSP), Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), Reform Party (RP), National Solidarity Party (NSP) and Peoples Voice (PV).

Only parties with at least six candidates and have recognised party symbols are given this airtime.

If you're wondering how the speeches compared against each other, one data analyst provided one way of looking at things:

Chua Chin Hon did a sentiment analysis on the political broadcast speeches for all seven parties, and sorted them according to how positive or negative they were.

This image was shared to his Twitter account on July 3, with the positive portions are represented in blue, and negative portions in red.

Overall, however, PAP and WP speeches came up as more positive, while PSP, PV and SDP speeches were on the negative end of the spectrum.

PAP's speech by Heng Swee Keat was the most positive.

Chua especially noted PSP's speech by Tan Cheng Bock, claiming it had a "negative tone".

In Tan's speech, he had questioned the PAP's accountability by asking questions such as: "Ask yourself, have you ever heard any of your PAP MPs ask the hard questions?" Tan had also said that he's contesting in this GE because the PAP "has lost its way".

NSP and RP speeches were somewhere in the middle.

You can see his original tweet here:

#GE2020 July 3 update: Here's another way to look at last night's party political broadcast speeches, as part of my ongoing experiment with sentiment analysis/structure.

Distinctly -ve speeches are on left and +ve ones on right. Those with a better balance are in the centre.
1/3 pic.twitter.com/WmzpgTN7ST

— Chua Chin Hon (@chinhon) July 3, 2020

Previously, Chua did a sentiment analysis of PM Lee's Covid-19 speeches as well. In his medium post, however, he also acknowledged that the sentiment surrounding a speech doesn't just depend on the words used.

The speaker's delivery and demeanour also matter, he said.

Cool.

Top photo by Chua Chin Hon.