Young Civil Servants
The grading and promotion system has never been fair. A-Grades in appraisals had always been reserved for pillar heads and scholars no matter how slack they are. They saw for themselves being stuck because of their less-shiny academic qualifications despite being more committed than leaderships who are seat-warmers, touring like a management trainee.
Their best compensations for swallowing their pride, are the fat bonuses but higher utilities, transport, child-raising and housing costs are taking a toll on them. These young civil servants are very much like zombies who have grown disillusioned of the Singapore Dream and feel resigned to fate.
Hyflux Investors
The recent collapse in Hyflux affected 3x more investors than the Lehman Brothers minibond saga. Over 50000 were affected including their dependants, which represents about 5-7% of the entire voting population. Despite engaging their members of parliament, none voiced the grievance for the affected, except NMP Associate Professor Daniel Goh.
Observers are sufficiently puzzled about the lack of state-bailout despite Hyflux being a patriotic and symbolic local enterprise that was drowned in refinancing woes, while state-investment vehicles opted to support questionable investments overseas.
Buyers of Resale HDB flats
The recent decline in HDB prices is a sharp contrast to leasehold private-properties. While there is a good chance for owners of leasehold private properties to recycle the the value of their existing assets through enbloc sales, new owners of Resale HDBs realized that their flats will simply depreciate to nothing over an extended period of time without SERS.
Policymakers can only buy time by launching 50 or 60-years leasehold new HDBs which make these older HDB estates appear younger in age on paper, thus leaving the job of defusing this housing time-bomb to the next generation's leadership.
The Righteous within PAP party-ranks
The recent comments from Mr Edmund Barker's daughter hints to an emerging group within traditionalist PAP members that can relate better with self-sacrificing doctors, lawyers and professionals from the opposition camp.
It doesn't mean that this group will quit the party. However, they probably realize that the best way forward is to amend the party's elitist policies, else suffer a significantly weaker GE win which will force the top leadership to rethink their approach from scratch.
Taxi Drivers / Private-Hire Drivers
There are almost 80,000 taxi-drivers and private-hire drivers on the road (including part-timers).
About 1/4 of them are taxi-drivers. Traditionally, Taxi-drivers have been vocal against the incumbent ruling party but eventually still reserve their votes for them. The emergence of PHDs in the past 4-5 years took a toll on their earnings. On another front, PHDs themselves aren't having it better themselves either after having their livelihoods disrupted by the GRAB-UBER merger and stricter licensing requirements. The emergence of companies hiring Malaysians to drive the PH vehicles will definitely add further stress to this industry.
The Middle Ground Voters
Based on the results from the last Presidential Elections, many observers will assume 1/3 of the electorate as core PAP supporters and another 1/3 as core opposition supporters. Tan Cheng Bock's marginal defeat created the need for Halimah's walkover when policymakers realized that middle-ground voters likely accounted for another 1/3 of the electorate.
Coincidentally, PAP's 70% support from the last GE almost equates to Tony Tan and Tan Cheng Bock's votes in the last Presidential Elections. This further justified the hypothesis that support from Tan Cheng Bock comes from PAP's pie.
Now, deprieved of a chance to vote for a true Malay or people's president, Tan Cheng Bock's participation in the next GE is expected to create more swing votes if the opposition competes under one unified flag.
Sinkies will complain plenty, at the end of the day they will still end up voting for the People's Adulterers party because they just love being bullied.