}}{{Politics of Singapore}}

General elections were held in Singapore on 3 November 2001. The ruling People's Action Party (PAP) won 82 of the 84 elected seats in Parliament. Due to the large number (51) of uncontested seats, only 675,306 of the 2,036,923 eligible voters (33.2%) had an opportunity to vote. As of the recent election in 2015, this was the third consecutive and fourth overall (and recent) election PAP returned to power on nomination day with a majority of uncontested walkovers.

Background and issues

The ruling PAP's leader and Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong initially planned for the election to be held in 2002, but pushed to November after Singapore faced their worst economical crisis since independence due to the events of September 11 attacks in the United States.

For the first time since 1963, a formal political umbrella emerged from within the opposition. The four-party Singapore Democratic Alliance (SDA), which consist of the leader party Singapore People's Party (SPP), the National Solidarity Party (NSP), Pertubuhan Kebangsaan Melayu Singapura (PKMS) and Singapore Justice Party (SJP), was led by Chiam See Tong. SDA fielded the most candidates in the election, where NSP provided the bulk of nine candidates, SPP with four, and PKMS providing a required minority candidate.

Former Workers' Party (WP) Non-Constituency Member of Parliament Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, who lost his seat after being declared a bankrupt owing to lawsuits by PAP leaders, resigned from the party, citing disagreements with the present leadership. Sole WP MP Low Thia Khiang took over as secretary-general. During nomination day, only two wards (Hougang and Nee Soon East SMC) were contested, as their sole GRC team who attempt to nominate in Aljunied Group Representation Constituency was disqualified for filing incomplete papers.

A seat had been vacated in 1999 after the conviction of Jalan Besar GRC's MP Choo Wee Khiang over commercial crimes, but no by-election was held as the seat was within a GRC. Under the law, an entire electoral constituency, be it GRC or SMC, has to be vacated before a by-election could be called, as this was done during the Marine Parade GRC by-election of 1992.

This election saw its shortest campaigning period of 17 days after opening of the register of electors, as well as the absence of four-member GRCs from the electoral map (four-member GRCs would reappear again in the 2011 elections, nearly a decade later). Another increase of the election deposit amount this time was the most significant one in history, which almost doubled.

The end result saw WP's Low and SDA's Chiam retaining their seats, but saw their winning margins slashed from the 1997. With these two opposition wins, one NCMP seat was offered to and accepted by Steve Chia of SDA-NSP, who became the youngest and first-ever non-WP NCMP.

Electoral boundaries

Outgoing/New MPs

Results

PAP won a landslide victory and its best result since 1980. The party achieved its third highest score among the general elections it has contested, since 1959. The PAP's vote percentage of 75.3% signalled an overwhelming endorsement of the PAP to lead the nation out of the crisis that came at a time of great uncertainty over world security and the recession that came after the 9/11 attacks. This was also the last time Goh Chok Tong led the party into a general election.

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