East Coast GRC ripe ground for GE2025's plot twists

With battle lines redrawn and significant changes to many constituencies, which will be the ones under the spotlight in GE2025? The Straits Times dives into the issues and concerns on the ground in East Coast GRC.

- Wong Pei Ting

East Coast GRC has been a pressure cooker for four election cycles, and looks set once again to be among the most hotly contested battlegrounds.

The general election in 2025 will likely see the PAP go head-to-head with the Workers' Party in the constituency for the fifth time.

The ruling party — shored up by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, who was then prime minister-in-waiting — narrowly won its most recent bout in the five-member constituency, with a vote share of 53.4 per cent.

This was down from 60.7 per cent in 2015. While the ruling party's share of the popular vote rebounded nearly 10 percentage points to 69.9 per cent that year, the recovery in East Coast was more muted.

And in 2011, when the People's Action Party lost Aljunied GRC, its East Coast vote share slipped 9 percentage points from 2006, to 54.8 per cent.

The GRC has now absorbed Marine Parade's Joo Chiat ward, a former single seat that the WP fell just short of winning in 2011. All eyes are on whether the opposition party will make further inroads in 2025.