Opposition needs to reduce the incumbency effect by focusing on the need for different views and check and balances in Parliament, and by reaching out to the more educated and younger voters, and on the job situation to touch base with the less educated and older voters.

- More than 72% of the voter base stated that the work of former MPs is important, favoring the incumbent party.

- More than 84% of the voters viewed the need for different views and checks and balances in Parliament as important.

- 50% of the voters stated that their job situation is an important issue, especially the older and less educated Singaporeans.

3. Opposition should focus on harnessing the mass media to influence the lower educated, lower income and older voters. The opposition needs to learn how it might effectively communicate their platforms and policies to all newspapers catering to the English, Chinese, Malay and Indian communities and to build strong rapport with local senior journalists. The internet, political rallies and door-to-door visits are less important, even though these are heavily employed by all parties during the campaigning period.

- Mass media is still overwhelming more important, with 75% and 69% of voters agreeing that newspaper and local TV programs are important in shaping their voting decision.

- Election rallies and door-to-door visits which play a greater role during the campaigning period are less effective, with 47% and 45% of voters agreeing that these are important in shaping their decision.

- The internet has a relatively small impact on voter's decision, with only 33% agreeing that it is effective in shaping voters' decision. Even party literature (34%) and radio (36%) are slightly more effective.

- It has been widely recognized that the opposition has been more effective in communicating its messages to the public through the internet and rallies.

4.Opposition must focus on wining the Malay and Indian voters by reaching out to them through the Malay and Indian newspapers and TV channels, as they are more supportive of the incumbent party.

- More Malay (4.17 out of a max of 5) and Indian (4.25) voters agree that the incumbent party is more credible than the Chinese voter (4.09)

- More Malay (3.72) and Indian (3.66) voters agree that the party affiliation of a candidate is important as compared to the Chinese (3.23)

- More Malay (4.33/4.26) and Indian (4.26/4.06) voters agree that newspaper and radio is important as compared to the Chinese (3.83/3.64).

5. Building party credibility is critical to overcoming the barrier for the voters to vote for opposition due to a significant gap between the incumbent and opposition parties. There is a perfect correlation in the ranking order of votes won by the four parties and the perceived credibility of the parties.

- Over 87% agree that the incumbent party is credible, followed by WP (61%), SDA (49%) and SDP (18%).

6. Beside the obvious characteristics of being perceived as being honest, efficient, hardworking, a fair person and understanding people, opposition candidates must be able to reflect and echo the views of the voters and be involved in grassroots or community work. The candidate must also be perceived as credible, even thought voters surprisingly stated that the party of the candidate is relatively less important.

- All parties, even the incumbent parties, will have to continue to source for the best candidates as voters do not appear to just vote blindly for a candidate because of the party affiliation. The success of the incumbent party is due to the fact that the party has been able to consistently attract credible candidates to stand for election. As stated, 68% of the voters agree that credibility of a candidate is important, as compared to 52% of the voters who stated that the party affiliation of the candidate is important.

- The importance of fairness for the voters (91% of voters agree that this is important) may have cost PAP votes due to perceived unfairness in "vote for upgrading" and the overwhelming attention on the James Gomez incident. Voters stated that fairness is relatively more important than credibility in a candidate, even though an overwhelming number of voters prefer candidates to have both characteristics.

Points to note:

- The above analysis is based on the limited information that is available from the IPS final survey report on its website. I do not have access to the survey questionnaire and actual dataset to conduct further analyses.

-IPS has used cluster analysis to determine the voter's segments of Conservative, Swing and Pluralists. However, I will focus on the more actionable variables such as age, education and ethnicity in my following recommendations because of the ease of identifying the voters involved.

- These recommendations are also useful for the incumbent party to counter the opposition's focus for its 2011 election strategies.