Rising costs and clicks: Social listening insights from Singapore’s GE2025 campaign
GST and cost-of-living discussions are three times more negative while sparking engagement among younger and older netizens
The cost of living is a recurring concern that weighs heavier this election season for Singapore, one that is magnified by recent goods and services tax (GST) hikes, which was raised from 7% to 8% in 2023 and then to 9% last year. Earlier this year, Blackbox Research had also highlighted that the cost of living remains the top concern among Singaporeans.
So, how heavily does the additional everyday financial stress weigh on the electorate in GE2025? Let’s see what social listening distils about what Singapore’s netizens are saying about these two topics.
Social media impact of Cost-of-living and GST hikes
To understand the impact of the cost of living and GST hikes on the digital dinner table over the last seven days since Nomination Day on April 23, GE2025 is used as a control baseline, as GE2025 is a relatively neutral topic.
While GE2025 enjoys a largely neutral public discourse (73% neutral sentiment, 10.1% negative sentiment), GST-related discussions spike to nearly 30% negative, and cost-of-living worries leap even higher at 34% negative.
Cost of living and GST are certainly hot-button issues with widespread reach. The conversation on the cost of living and GST has achieved a potential reach of 1.9 billion and 949 million impressions, respectively, or up to 54% relative to GE2025’s reach.
More tellingly, the potential reach for the cost of living is higher than GST despite a lower number of results (921) relative to the latter (1400). This implies that cost of living-related topics are discussed by influencers and publications with a larger audience, and they’re sharing to amplify it.
Who’s Talking?
Digging into demographics gives us deeper nuance:
When we compare with GE2025 (29.9%), cost-of-living issues (33.6%) resonate more among younger Singaporeans (18-24 years old). GST, by contrast, draws heavier engagement from audiences aged between 45-54 years old (7.4%). As both issues tend to invoke negative sentiments, these data points might concern the incumbent party. Historical data from the 2015 General Elections, as analyzed by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), shows that younger and older voters previously contributed to the incumbent party’s relatively high 69.9% vote share that year.
A higher percentage of women (44.9%) are engaged with cost-of-living issues relative to GE2025 (39.5%). This is potentially significant as female voters are a demographic the incumbent party is putting more effort into targeting. For GE2025, 40.6% of the 32 new potential PAP candidates are women, up from 37% in 2020 and just over 20% in 2011 and 2015.
As a social listening analyst with experience decoding social media topic trends, election predictions are outside my realm of expertise! For brands that are seeking to win trust and market share, I hope this article builds the case that social media listening is worth listening to.
About the author
JX (Jaxon) Tan founded Momentum AI Communications, a boutique PR consultancy based in Singapore, with a mission to simplify science and spark engagement. He was head of content (APAC) for PR Newswire, with extensive experience in social media listening and media relations. Reach him on LinkedIn.