Election Series XV - 13 Sep, 2004 Key aspects - The Expected and Unexpected1st Analysis [there will be a more detailed final report to complete this series]
The 2004 LegCo election was characterised by:
1. Poor management of the election with too few ballot boxes and other problems.
2. Ability to get vote splitting strategies right for the Geographical Constituencies (GCs);
3. Surprises in the Functional Constituencies (FCs); and
4. Hong Kong voters are irrepressible.
A. Getting the turnout wrong … initially
Expect to hear complaints about the poor management of the election and how it may have deterred voters. An extraordinary error was the government’s announcement in the early hours of today that the voter turnout rate was 53%, only to revise it to 55.63% at 7 am. Such mismanagement was a surprise since Hong Kong had a good record in organizing elections.
B. Voting Strategies … GCs
1. Pro-government success: The DAB did well to win 2 seats in Kowloon East by successfully splitting their votes between two lists.
2. Major pro-democracy error: The DP’s mistake on HK Island cost the pro-democracy camp what was a sure win. The DP mounted an aggressive campaign in the last 3 days to urge voters to vote for the DP list to ensure Martin Lee got elected thereby taking votes away from the more popular Audrey Eu/Cyd Ho list. The result was that Ho lost and the seat went to the DAB. Polls showed Lee would have enough votes to get elected so it is unclear what caused the DP’s last minute nervousness.
3. Long Hair’s victory: While polls showed LH was going to win, he had so many votes that he knocked out another democrat, thereby giving a seat to the DAB.
4. ‘Diamond’ in the wrong place: Instead of running on one list, the DP/Frontier/Ronny Tong, should have split up in NTE and the DP/unionists should have ran on a diamond ticket in NTW because the candidates were more similar in NTW than NTE.
C. Surprising FC wins
The pro-democracy camp held 5 FC seats in the last LegCo - legal, nursing, education, social welfare and information technology. For the new LegCo, it lost nursing but won the medical and accountancy FCs giving it a total of 3 new faces in LegCo and one additional seat to make up for the one it should not have lost on Hong Kong Island.
D. HK Voters - their irrepressible spirit
Out of 3.207 million registered voters, a total of 1,784 million voted representing a turnout of 55.6%, the highest both in numbers and percentage in Hong Kong’s history.
CHRISTINE LOH
Civic Exchange - HK’s independent think tank
www.civic-exchange.org