History of elections in Singapore began with this very first election. Only six out of 22 were seats opened to the electorate and another three would be nominated by the three commercial organisations, namely the Singapore Chamber of Commerce, Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Indian Chamber of Commerce. The British colonial government appointed the remaining 13 seats, which comprised of the posts of Governor, Colonial Secretary, Financial Secretary, Attorney-General, Solicitor-General, two Directors, two Ex-Officio Commissioners and four Non-Officio ones. Two constituencies had two seats each while two others had one. Parties had no fixed standard symbol and candidates had to ballot for one offered by the elections office. PP was the only contesting party. Voting was not compulsory and a privilege to only "British subjects", constituting about 2% of Singapore's population of over 940,000 residents.

Nomination day: 16 February 1948 [Mon]
Polling day: 20 March 1948 [Sat]
Council convention: 1 April 1948 [Thu]

Registered voters: 22,334
Total voter turnout: 14,126 (63.2%)
Total votes cast: 25,072

Election deposit: $500

RESULTS
One-seat constituencies	Two-seat constituencies
Rural East	Municipal North-East
Rural West	Municipal South-West
Total seats = 6