Almost 84% of S’poreans Have No Hard Feelings With Foreigners in S’pore & Only 10% Think S’pore Shouldn’t Remain Open to Them

If you go to Facebook and read the comments, you might come to the conclusion that Singaporeans are a batch of hardcore xenophobic people. Don’t believe me? If you’ve come to this article through Facebook, finish reading this article and check out the comments on Facebook for this post.

This is why you should download our app to read our article instead, because if you throw a raw egg at Facebook comments, it could boil immediately.

But the truth is that based on a poll, Singaporeans aren’t xenophobic—unless you’re unemployed, that is.

Read on to find out why it appears to be different from what you read online.

Almost 84% of S’poreans Have No Hard Feelings With Foreigners in Singapore

In 1985, the authorities started the Singapore Government’s Feedback Unit (FBU) to get feedback from Singaporeans on national and social issues. The FBU became REACH in 2006 as Government agencies can now use both online and offline measures to gather feedback and to engage with citizens.

In August 2020, they conducted a poll on how Singaporeans felt about foreigners in Singapore.

3,150 random Singaporeans who were above the age of 15 were polled. 2,100 of them conducted the poll on the phone while 1,050 conducted it online.

The results are completely different from the Facebook comments you’ve been reading regularly.

For a start, for the general population (i.e. everyone), 2% were unsure what they thought of foreigners.

5% felt very positive about foreigners in Singapore, while a whopping 30% felt positive about them in Singapore.

49% felt neutral about them.

Only 12% felt negative about them, and 2% felt very negative about them. These people most probably live in Facebook comments and never read articles beyond the headlines.

For people who are employed or people who don’t need to work, the percentage is about the same.

However, it’s quite different for unemployed people.

For people who’re jobless, only 74% have no hard feelings with foreigners in Singapore. In this group, one of the key concerns they had were job-related. It doesn’t take a genius to come out with the conclusion that they feel that foreigners had snatched their job opportunities.

Now, what else can we tell from this latest poll?

Only 10% Disagree That Singapore Should Remain Open to Them

Remember: this survey was done in August when people were still losing their jobs due to COVID-19.

However, Singaporeans generally felt that Singapore should remain open to foreigners. 2% of the general population is unsure, but a whopping 63% strongly agree or agree that Singapore should remain open.

25% is neutral while 10% strongly disagree or disagree.

And similarly, the results are about the same for the employed and those who don’t need to work, but a little different from unemployed folks.

For the unemployed, 14% strongly disagree or disagree.

By now you should be wondering: really meh?

Accurate or Not?

Remember how accurate sample counts are during the recent GE2020? That’s because maths can explain everything, and it’s all about maths.

A sample size of over 3,000 for a population of about 3.5 million people is a reasonable number.

Agak agak, that’s a 99% confidence level with a 2.29% margin of error, or 95% confidence level with 1.75% margin of error.

In other words, if you want a simple way to know if it’s accurate, then just remember how accurate sample counts are instead of reading Facebook comments.

Because if you’ve watched The Social Dilemma, you’d know why the Internet tends to agree with everything you say.

Or you can watch this video to the end to understand why the Internet seems to agree with your views wholeheartedly (and please subscribe to our YouTube channel for more informative videos!):