Hong Kong legislative election, 2008

Hong Kong legislative election, 2008

7 September 2008
All 60 seats to the Legislative Council 31 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Registered	3,372,007 (GC)
Turnout	1,524,249 (45.20%) 10.44pp
First party Second party Third party   Leader Tam Yiu-chung Albert Ho James Tien Party DAB Democratic Liberal Alliance Pro-Beijing Pan-democracy Pro-Beijing Leader's seat New Territories West New Territories West New Territories East (lost seat) Last election 10 seats, 22.73% 9 seats, 25.19% 10 seats, 6.72% Seats won 10[n 1] 8 7 Seat change 1 1 3 Popular vote 347,373 312,692 65,622 Percentage 22.92% 20.63% 4.33% Swing 0.19pp 4.56pp 2.39pp   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader Audrey Eu Cheng Yiu-tong Wong Yuk-man Party Civic FTU LSD Alliance Pan-democracy Pro-Beijing Pan-democracy Leader's seat Hong Kong Island Did not stand Kowloon West Last election New party 3 seats, 2.97% New party Seats won 5 4[n 1] 3 Seat change 1 1 1 Popular vote 206,980 86,311 153,390 Percentage 13.66% 5.70% 10.12% Swing 7.04pp 2.73pp N/A   Seventh party Eighth party Ninth party   Leader Leung Yiu-chung Lau Chin-shek Bruce Liu Party NWSC CTU ADPL Alliance Pan-democracy Pan-democracy Pan-democracy Leader's seat New Territories West Kowloon West (lost seat) Did not stand Last election 1 seat, 3.33% 1 seat, 3.95% 1 seat, 4.22% Seats won 1 1 1 Seat change Popular vote 42,441 42,366 42,211 Percentage 2.80% 2.80% 2.79% Swing 0.53pp 1.15pp 1.43pp
Elected candidates by each constituency
President before election Rita Fan Independent Elected President Tsang Yok-sing DAB

The 2008 Hong Kong Legislative Council election was held on 7 September 2008^[1] for the 4th Legislative Council since the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. There were 60 seats in the 4th Legislative Council, with 30 members elected by geographical constituencies through direct elections, and 30 members by functional constituencies.^[2] Candidates for 14 functional constituency seats were unopposed.

The turnout rate was 45 percent with 1.51 million voters casting the ballots, about 10 percent lower than the previous election in 2004. The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) remained the largest single party in the Legislative Council with 13 seats if including the two members of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (FTU) while the pro-business Liberal Party suffered a big defeat by losing the two heavyweights, chairman James Tien and vice-chairwoman Selina Chow lost their seats in the New Territories East and the New Territories West. The duo resigned from their party positions and Chow resigned from the Executive Council after the election, which was followed by a great split of the party.^[3]

In the backdrop of a deteriorating economy and rising inflation, the pro-grassroots parties scored victories as the new pro-democracy party League of Social Democrats (LSD) had their three candidates elected and the FTU also won in two seats in the geographical constituencies. The pro-democracy flagship party Democratic Party retook the second largest party status despite losing one seat to its ally, the new middle-class oriented Civic Party which took two seats in Hong Kong Island with party leader Audrey Eu stood as the second candidate behind party's new face Tanya Chan.

The share of the pan-democratic parties' vote among voters dropped from 60 percent in 2004 to 57 percent, which translated into a net loss of two seats compared to the last election. The pan-democrats were elected to a total of 23 seats, 19 seats in the directly elected geographical constituencies, and four seats from the functional constituencies. By virtue of having in excess of one-third of the seats in Legislative Council, their ability to veto constitutional changes remained intact. The pan-democrats' veto power was seen as crucial for the electoral arrangements for the 2012 Legislative Council election, which would take place during this session.^[4]

Pre-election issues

The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress vote in December 2007 to allow universal suffrage by 2017, and full Legislative Council elections by 2020, tempered the debate on universal suffrage. Wary of political parties, the government sought to defer discussion on other highly sensitive issues until October 2008, in the hopes that the election will be void of focus. The election was therefore fought over issues regarding the minimum wage, health care reform, Old Age Allowance, and the future of RTHK. Also, the case surrounding former Housing Director Leung Chin-man served to highlight the issue of systematic checks and balances, and the lack of political scrutiny of government actions.^[5]

Commentators, such as Albert Cheng, noted that the fighting between pro-democracy parties was heating up, but forecast few changes in the overall party standings of the new Council. He cited proportional representation as a mechanism, which built in protection for a multi-party system.^[6]

There were some concerns that those seeking the right of abode in Hong Kong felt pressured by lobbyists supporting the DAB. Two advocacy groups echoed abode-seekers' in being bombarded with telephone calls and other pressures to vote for the DAB, or for Regina Ip.^[7]

Candidates

A total of 142 candidates on 53 lists entered the election via the geographical constituencies,^[8] making it the most contested election since the handover of Hong Kong.^[9] The candidates of both the pan-democracy and pro-Beijing coalitions stated that they would not allocate the votes within each camp, leading to infighting inside the caucuses.^[10] Martin Lee and Anson Chan announced that they would not stand, and would endorse other candidates. In addition, some incumbent legislators such as Audrey Eu of the Civic Party and Yeung Sum of the Democratic Party were placed second on their lists in an attempt to get less experienced members of their parties elected.^[11]

Beijing's involvement in the elections was an open secret: its strategy was to elect a new batch of "independent" aspirants with profession backgrounds and without a strong pro-Beijing image, such as Scarlet Pong, and eventual winners Regina Ip and Priscilla Leung. It had hoped they would appeal to the middle class voters and steal votes from the pan-democratic parties.^[4]

The functional constituencies were less competitive: 14 out of the 30 seats were uncontested. The Accounting and Architectural, Surveying and Planning functional constituencies were the most contested, with 5 candidates competing in each constituency.^[12][13] 45 candidates in total ran for the 16 contested seats.^[14]

Retiring incumbents

Ten incumbents chose not to run for re-election.

Opinion polling

  Democratic

  DAB

  Liberal

  Civic

  ADPL

  LSD

  FTU

Results

Results of the election: the party with the plurality of votes by each polling station.

A record number of 3.37 million people registered to vote in the election. The turnout rate was low, at 45% with 1.51 million voters casting ballots.^[15]

Commentator Chris Yeung believed that the Liaison Office operated behind the scenes to co-ordinate votes for the pro-Beijing camp. These independents managed to secure seats, but apparently not at the expense of support for the pan-democrats.^[4]

The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong remained the largest single party in Council, with 13 seats.^[16] The share of the pan-democratic parties' vote among voters dropped from 60% in 2004 to 57%, which translated into a net loss of 2 seats. The pan-democrats were elected to a total of 23 seats, 19 seats in the directly elected geographical constituencies, and four seats from the functional constituencies. By virtue of having in excess of ​¹⁄₃ of the seats in LegCo, their ability to veto constitutional changes remained intact. The pan-democrats' veto power were crucial for the electoral arrangements for the 2012 elections, which will take place during this Council.^[4]

In the backdrop of a deteriorating economy and rising inflation, voters shifted their preferences towards more radical and grass-roots politicians; the electorate's suspicions of collusion between government and big business dealt a blow to the Liberal Party.^[17] The Liberal Party suffered double defeat when Selina Chow and chairman James Tien lost their seats in the New Territories West and New Territories East geographical constituencies respectively. Their bid to secure seats in other constituencies also failed. Tien resigned as the Liberal Party's chairman after his defeat, and Chow resigned both her vice-chairmanship and her seat on the Executive Council of Hong Kong.^[3] The election of three members of the League of Social Democrats and four trade-unionists to Legco is set to pose a challenge to the government on welfare and livelihood issues.^[18]

Share of votes of the parties by polling stations:

Democratic Party	Civic Party	League of Social Democrats
DAB	FTU

Before election:

Change in composition:

 Summary of the 7 September 2008 Legislative Council of Hong Kong election results

Parties and allegiances			Geographical constituencies				Functional constituencies				Total seats	±
			Votes	%	±pp	Seats	Votes	%	±pp	Seats
		Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong	347,373	22.92	0.19	7	259	0.21	N/A	3	10	1
		Liberal Party	65,622	4.33	2.39	0	4,089	3.34	1.37	7	7	3
		Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions	86,311	5.70	2.73	2	–	–	–	2	4	1
		Pro-Beijing individuals and others	103,162	6.81	−	2	33,633	27.50	–	14	16	−
Total for pro-Beijing camp			602,468	39.75	2.35	11	37,981	31.06	1.47	26	37	3
		Democratic Party	312,692	20.63	4.56	7	41,331	33.80	3.15	1	8	1
		Civic Party	207,000	13.66	7.04	4	9,187	7.51		1	5	1
		League of Social Democrats	153,390	10.12	N/A	3	–	–	–	–	3	1
		Neighbourhood and Worker's Service Centre	42,441	2.80	0.53	1	–	–	–	–	1	0
		Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions	42,366	2.80	1.15	1	–	–	–	–	1	0
		Hong Kong Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood	42,211	2.79	1.43	1	–	–	–	–	1	0
		The Frontier	33,205	2.19	4.70	1	–	–	–	–	1	0
		Civic Act-up	30,887	2.04	0.05	1	–	–	–	–	1	1
		Hong Kong Social Workers' General Union	–	–	–	–	5,334	4.36	1.90	1	1	1
		Pro-democracy individuals and others	37,515	2.48	−	0	18,276	14.95	–	2	–	−
Total for pan-democracy camp			901,707	59.50	2.94	19	74,128	60.62	2.19	4	23	3
	Councillors without formal affiliation with any political party		11,304	0.75	−	0	10,173	8.32	–	0	0	0
Total			1,515,479	100.00		30	122,282	100.00		30	60	0
Valid votes			1,515,479	99.42	0.20		122,282	95.56	0.85
Invalid votes			8,770	0.58	0.20		5,691	4.44	0.85
Votes cast / turnout			1,524,249	45.20	10.43		127,973	60.30	9.84
Registered voters			3,372,007	100.00	5.14		212,227	100.00	10.32
Source: Hong Kong government

Note: Candidates in 14 functional constituencies were elected uncontested to the Legislative Council. The number of seats for the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions in the geographical constituencies exclude Wong Kwok-hing, Wong Kwok-kin and Pan Pey Chyou, who are also DAB members; figures in parentheses in the pan-democracy and pro-Beijing total percentage exclude all votes of other individuals.

Votes summary

Ring charts of the election results showing popular vote against seats won, coloured in green (Pro-democracy camp) and red (Pro-Beijing camp) on the left and the party colours on the right. Seats won in the election (outer ring) against number of votes (inner ring).

Popular vote DAB   22.92% Democratic   20.63% Civic   13.66% LSD   10.10% FTU   5.70% Liberal   4.33% NWSC   2.80% CTU   2.80% ADPL   2.79% Frontier   2.19% Civic Act-up   2.19% Others   10.03%

Geographical Constituencies (30 seats)

Voting system: Party-list proportional representation with largest remainder method and Hare quota.

Results of the Geographical Constituencies
Hong Kong Island (香港島)
List № Party/Allegiance Candidate(s) Votes Votes % Seat(s) won 1 Liberal Lam Chui-lin Wong Kam-chuen Ngan Choi-chik 2,166 0.7 2 Civic Act-up Cyd Ho Sau-lan 30,887 9.9 1 3 Democratic Kam Nai-wai Yeung Sum Tsui Yuen-wa 39,808 12.7 1 4 LSD Tsang Kin-shing 10,202 3.3 5 DAB Jasper Tsang Yok-sing Choy So-yuk Christopher Chung Shu-kun Cheung Kwok-kwan Chan Hok-fung Kwok Wai-keung 60,417 19.3 1 6 Independent Myra Sophia Siu Man-wa 1,798 0.6 7 Independent Lo Wing-lok 20,523 6.5 8 Civic Tanya Chan Audrey Eu Yuet-mee Amy Yung Wing-sheung 82,600 26.4 2 9 Independent Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee Louis Shih Tai-cho Wong Kin-hing Ronald Chan Ngok-pang 61,073 19.5 1 10 Independent Joseph Lai Chi-keong 3,955 1.3 TOTAL (Quota: 52,238 votes, 16.67%) 313,429 100.0 6
Kowloon West (九龍西)
List № Party/Allegiance Candidate(s) Votes Votes % Seat(s) won 1 Independent Francis Chong Wing-charn 1,076 0.5 2 DAB Starry Lee Wai-king Chung Kong-mo Chan Wai-ming Vincent Cheng Wing-shun 39,013 18.9 1 3 SDA James Lung Wai-man Bantawa Sukra 591 0.3 4 Democratic James To Kun-sun Lam Ho-yeung 29,690 14.4 1 5 Civic Claudia Mo Man-ching Ng Yuet-lan Tang Chi-ying 17,259 8.4 6 Independent Lam Yi-lai 590 0.3 7 Independent Priscilla Leung Mei-fun Edward Leung Wai-kuen Aaron Lam Ka-fai 19,914 9.6 1 8 LSD Raymond Wong Yuk-man Lee Wai-yee 37,553 18.2 1 9 Liberal Michael Tien Puk-sun Ho Hin-ming 13,011 6.3 10 ADPL Frederick Fung Kin-kee Rosanda Mok Ka-han Tsung Po-shan Wong Chi Yung Yeung Chun-yu 35,440 17.2 1 11 Independent Lau Chin-shek 10,553 5.1 12 Independent Lau Yuk-shing Nandeed Cheung Kit-fung David Tsui 290 0.1 13 Independent Tam Hoi-pong 1,603 0.8 TOTAL(Quota: 41,317 votes, 20.00%) 206,583 100.0 5
Kowloon East (九龍東)
List № Party/Allegiance Candidate(s) Votes Votes % Seat(s) won 1 Democratic Wu Chi-wai 16,365 6.9 2 LSD Andrew To Kwan-hang 28,690 12.1 3 DAB Chan Kam-lam Joe Lai Wing-ho Maggie Chan Man-ki Hung Kam-in 53,472 22.6 1 4 Civic Alan Leong Kah-kit Yu Kwun-wai Wong Hok-ming 39,274 16.6 1 5 Democratic Fred Li Wah-ming Kai Ming-wah Wong Kai-ming Wong Wai-tag 48,124 20.4 1 6 FTU Wong Kwok-kin Chan Yuen-han Peter Wong Kit-hin Kan Ming-tung 50,320 21.3 1 TOTAL (Quota: 59,061 votes, 25.00%） 236,245 100.0 4
New Territories West (新界西)
List № Party/Allegiance Candidate(s) Votes Votes % Seat(s) won 1 Civic Fernando Cheung Chiu-hung Sumly Chan Yuen-sum Wong Ka-wa 27,910 7.0 2 CTU Lee Cheuk-yan Tam Chun-yin 42,366 10.6 1 3 DAB Tam Yiu-chung Cheung Hok-ming Leung Che-cheung Chan Han-pan Lung Shui-hing Leung Kar-ming Andy Lo Kwong-shing Lui Kin 92,037 23.1 2 4 Democratic Albert Ho Chun-yan Hui Chi-fung Lo Man-hon 36,764 9.2 1 5 ADPL Tandon Lal Chaing Yeung Chi-hang 6,771 1.7 6 Independent Yuen Wai-chung 1,338 0.3 7 LSD Albert Chan Wai-yip 32,182 8.1 1 8 Independent Chow Ping-tim 1,720 0.4 9 FTU/DAB Wong Kwok-hing Alice Mak Mei-kuen Marina Tsang Tze-kwan Tsui Fan Dennis Leung Tsz-wing Tang Ka-piu Yiu Kwok-wai Manwell Chan 35,991 9.0 1 10 Democratic Cheung Yin-tung Kwong Chun-yu 10,069 2.5 11 Independent Leung Suet-fong Thapa Komal 1,366 0.3 12 Liberal Selina Chow Liang Shuk-yee Chow Wing-kan 21,570 5.4 13 NWSC Leung Yiu-chung Wong Yun-tat 42,441 10.7 1 14 Democratic Lee Wing-tat Wong Suet-ying Lam Siu-fai Cheung Wai-mei Lam Lap-chi 45,767 11.5 1 TOTAL (Quota: 49,787 votes, 12.50%） 398,292 100.0 8
New Territories East (新界東)
List № Party/Allegiance Candidate(s) Votes Votes % Seat(s) won 1 Liberal James Tien Pei-chun Terry Kan Wing-fai Christine Fong Kwok-shan 28,875 8.0 2 Party for Civil Rights and Livelihood Siu See-kong David Yung Chiu-wing 1,129 0.3 3 Frontier Emily Lau Wai-hing [[Ricky <span class="smallcaps" style="font-variant:small-caps;">Or</span> Yiu-lam]] 33,205 9.2 1 4 Democratic Nelson Wong Sing-chi Mok Siu-lun 44,174 12.2 1 5 LSD Leung Kwok-hung 44,763 12.4 1 6 Independent Alvin Lee Chi-wing 4,007 1.1 7 Democratic Andrew Cheng Kar-foo Yam Kai-bong Shirley Ho Suk-ping Leung Li Kwan Wing-yip Michael Yung Ming-chau Frankie Lam Siu-chung 41,931 11.6 1 8 Civic Ronny Tong Ka-wah Tsang Kwok-fung Tsang Kin-chiu 39,957 11.1 1 9 Independent Scarlett Pong Oi-lan 20,455 5.7 10 DAB Lau Kong-wah Gary Chan Hak-kan Mok Kam-kwai Wong Pik-kiu Chan Kwok-kai Lau Kwok-fan Calvin Lin Chor-keung 102,434 28.4 2 TOTAL (Quota: 51,561 votes, 14.29%） 360,930 100.0 7

See also

• Legislative Council of Hong Kong
• Hong Kong by-election, 2010

Notes

References

External links

• Legislative Council of Hong Kong
• Electoral Affairs Commission