It existed from 1968 to 1991 as an independent ward, was merged with Marine Parade GRC until 1997, and became an independent SMC again due to the challenge of Chee Soon Juan against Matthias Yao in a single-member constituency back in 1994 and Yao subsequently request Goh Chok Tong to carve out MacPherson from Marine Parade. Yao subsequently won 65.1% of the votes against Chee's 34.9%.[1] MacPherson would be a single-member ward until 2011, when it was merged back to Marine Parade GRC and became an independent SMC after one term in the 2015 general election.
For the 2015 general election, the National Solidarity Party (NSP) initially planned to field a candidate against PAP in the constituency, but decided to pull out of the contest when the Workers' Party (WP) announced it had also planned to contest in the constituency.[2] NSP later changed its mind and fielded Steve Chia in the constituency, but Chia would later pull out of the contest citing online abuse over his participation.[2] As a result, NSP fielded Cheo Chai Chen for the contest.[2] NSP's Acting Secretary-General, Hazel Poa, resigned from the party stating that she disagreed with the decision of the party's Central Executive Committee to contest in MacPherson.[3]
During the election campaign, Cheo drew considerable criticism for telling reporters that Tin's status as a new mother was "her weakness" and saying that she might spend more time focusing on her child than on her constituents.[4] Cheo later claimed that this comment was meant as a joke.[5] Tin won the election with 65.6%, Bernard Chen of WP gathered 33.6% and Cheo took just 0.8% of the votes. Cheo would forfeit his $14,500 election deposit.
Note : Elections Department Singapore do not include rejected votes for calculation of candidate's vote share. Hence, the total of all candidates' vote share will be 100%.
2.78
18.59
