An attempt to figure out the PAP voter base

I struck up a conversation with a taxi uncle today. No prizes for guessing that we spoke about the elections. He told me that he has three children, one of which is a Major in the SAF and the other an executive with DSTA. According to him, all of them, including the two public servants, voted for the opposition. He too voted against the PAP because he felt the overall standard of living was decreasing.

It's not surprising to see more public servants voting against the regime. Then how is it that the PAP still managed to cling onto 60% of the electorate? Where are the votes coming from?

Let me attempt to break it down. Please note that these are pure estimates. I apologise in advance if there are any gross inaccuracies. So here goes.

Public Service
This government website says there are about 124,000 officers working around various ministries. While it isn't clear, let's assume they are 2009 or 2010 figures.

Grassroots
According to TODAY, there are about 30,000 grassroots leaders Using the average household size of 3, there would roughly be 100,000 or so grassroots leaders and their families voting for PAP.

New Citizens
The PAP claims to need 20,000 new citizens each year. So you can deduce there would be about 100,000 new citizens from 2006-2010.

Older Voters
Referencing official stats, there are about 1.6 million citizens above 50 years. MM Lee claims that those 50 and above will remember the PAP contributions so I thought this would be a good gauge of PAP's staunchest demographic.

So the math is:

Type:	Votes:
Public Service	124,000
Grassroots	100,000
New Citizens	100,000
Older Voters	1,600,000
Total	1,924,000

Further assuming that all New Citizens will vote PAP and applying 60% to the rest (based on popular voting results), the number would be 1,194,400.
And after taking into account overlap in the categories by applying 70% factor, the estimated number of assured PAP votes is 836,080.

Again, this is only an estimate at best but that's 40% of the 2.2 million voters in the PAP's corner even before a minute of campaigning.
Throw in Grow & Share monies, a rare apology by PM Lee and some apparent underhand tactics, it's not hard to see how they can easily swing another 10-20% of the voters to win a mandate.