Singapore votes as ruling party seeks huge mandate

SINGAPORE, May 6 (Reuters) Singaporeans began voting today in a general election in which anything less than a crushing victory for the ruling People's Action Party could be regarded as a failure for Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

The poll is the first real popularity test for Lee, 54, since he was appointed in August 2004 without an election in a planned leadership transition.

The opposition has fielded candidates for more than half the seats in parliament, denying the PAP an automatic victory on Nomination Day for the first time in nearly two decades.

Voting is compulsory, but less than a quarter of Singapore's population of 4.4 million will get to vote due to walkovers in 37 of the 84 seats.

Many are voting for the first time.

''I voted for the opposition as I felt that they were going to try to do more for the needy and I wanted to give them a chance,'' said Jacinta Huang, a 24-year-old social worker.

Lee, the eldest son of former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, needs to get at least 61 percent of the votes and lose no more than four seats, analysts said. That was the result his predecessor, Goh Chok Tong, got in the PAP's worst electoral outcome in 1991.

Anything less than that would be a ''major psychological blow'', said Song Seng Wun, an economist at CIMB-GK Research.

DEFAMATION SUITS Singapore bans election surveys and exit polls, making it difficult to gauge opinion.

But opposition rallies have drawn big crowds -- including the prime minister's own teenage son.

''I asked him 'what did you hear?''' Lee told reporters on Friday night after finding out his son had attended an opposition rally.

MORE REUTERS SY VV1602