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Note: This article represents the view of the author and not the University of Hong Kong.

In terms of election stories, Kowloon West may be the most boring. It is small, with very few seats, and no new faces. At the end of the election, all four incumbent legislators got re-elected. The electorate was split between the pro-democratic and pro-China camps much like that four years ago.

Before the election, the pro-democratic camp once had extravagant hope to take all 4 seats in the constituency. Result proved that this was again a misconception by the July 1 Demonstration and was a risky strategy without research basis. Once the election began, our survey had revealed that, the result by and large was already settled. It was neither possible for the pro-democratic camp to take all 4 seats, nor for the DAB to take 2 seats. The election result showed that, the support rating obtained by the DAB had been slightly increased from 23% 4 years ago to 27%, with no significant changes. While the threshold required was 25%, the number of seats obtained by the 2 major camps would not be changed anyway.

Yet, the DP, after the Alex Ho's and James To's Incidents, had once worried they could not even get one seat. On the other hand, the DAB wanted to see a depletion of resources within the pro-democratic camp, together with the possibilities that Lau Yuk-Shing would seize part of the pro-democratic camp's votes, so as to increase the DAB's chance to obtain the second seat. Yet, facts proved that, the source of votes in the constituency was unusually stable, while the above events were just mere branches.

Viewing from the research perspective, the stable electoral strength in Kowloon West had not affected its importance. While the pro-democratic camp is relatively successful and stable, the integration within the camp is a long-term and inevitable problem. To be more concrete, the competition, or even the struggle between the DP and the ADPL, has long been found in Kowloon West. This year, Lau Chin-Shek and James To ran for the election in separate lists. To a certain extent, this could also be viewed as a competition between different lines within the camp. Frederick Fung's ADPL has always advocated both "talks and fightings" with the Bejing Government, while its relation with the DP was also fluctuating. This year, before the close of the Council session, Lau Chin-Shek suggested a conciliatory approach with the Beijing Government, seemingly following the ADPL's approach.

According to the analysis of the actual support ratings obtained, the pro-democratic camp in Kowloon West in fact was in the best position to try out the "Diamond List", so as to show the solidarity of the camp. The reason was that, unless the pro-democratic camp separated themselves into many lists, neither simple separation nor combination of lists would affect its chance to obtain 3 seats. The advantage of running for the election in one list was to foster a sense of solidarity, as well as facilitating the voters' choices.

However, since the DP and the ADPL had their own plan in mind, the pro-democratic camp preferred practising the "Diamond List" in the New Territories East instead of Kowloon East, despite the adverse situation. One of the important analyses of this article was to see how the supporters of the pro-democratic camp faced the competition within the camp. Our data was collected on the election day outside 13 polling stations in the constituency. It comprised 1,303 successful cases and 81 partially completed cases, with a response rate of 67.4%. The research design and other information of the survey will be published in our HKU POP Site by the end of next week.

Let us first examine the flow of votes between the two elections. Yet, it has to be first stated that, since No.1 Lau Yuk Shing's list only obtained 1,824 votes, which was less than 1% of the total number of votes, this list was not included in this article's analysis. By the same token, since the support rating of Bruce Liu was only 6%, a lot of analyses would be cut short. Basing on the performance of Bruce Liu during the election and the data obtained from the exit poll, we believe there was completely no overlap of source of votes between Bruce Liu's list and the DAB. In other words, if Bruce Liu's list obtained more votes, the winning chance of the pro-democratic camp's list would be reduced accordingly.

Table 1 reveals that, almost all voters supporting Jasper Tsang last time supported his list again this time, with only less than 10% turning to Lau Chin-Shek's and James To's lists. Among the voters in support of the joint list of Frederick Fung and Bruce Liu last time, 12% of them shifted to Jasper Tsang, another 12% shifted to Lau Chin-Shek's list and 7% shifted to James To's list. Only 55% were left to Frederick Fung, while 12% were "allocated" to Bruce Liu. In other words, the ADPL had only kept 77% of the votes. Regarding the joint list of Lau Chin-Shek, James To and Wong Chung-Ki last time, after parting this time, 59% were allocated to James To and 21% to Lau Chin-Shek, amounting to a total of 80%. Such proportion was higher than the ADPL's, but lower than the DAB's. A respective of 14% and 6% of that list had flowed to the ADPL and the DAB.

In short, there was a clear split between the pro-democratic and the pro-China camps in the constituency. Since there were no moderate forces taking part in the election, the inter-camp flow of votes was less than 10%. Together with the fact that the choices of the first-time voters were very similar to the general voters', the "July 1 Effect" had not appeared as expected by the pro-democratic camp.

Therefore, we deduced that, while there were no moderate forces taking part in the competition, the "July 1 Effect" has only strengthened the centripetal force of the supporters of the pro-democratic camp, particularly the DP, without weakening the support of the pro-China camp. In Kowloon West, although the ADPL and Lau Chin-Shek were more moderate than the DP, they failed to absorb the votes of the DAB. Table 2 shows that, among the supporters of James To's list, 51% had taken part in one of the July 1 Demonstrations, topping among all other lists in Hong Kong. The corresponding percentages for Frederick Fung, Lau Chin-Shek and Jasper Tsang were 27%, 28% and 6% in respective orders. The above figures reveal that, after Lau Chin-Shek and James To had parted, Lau Chin-Shek had moved to the middle of the political spectrum, overlapping with Frederick Fung, while supporters of James To were more radical.

This phenomenon could also be found in other political indicators. For example, with regard to the dissatisfaction with the SAR Government, the respective percentages for James To, Frederick Fung and Lau Chin-Shek were 77%, 52% and 46%, while the corresponding percentage for Jasper Tsang was only 10%. In this aspect, the supporters of Lau Chin-Shek were even milder than Frederick Fung's. If judging from the proportion of political and economic-social issues, 63% of James To's supporters emphasized more on politics, whereas for supporters of all other lists, around 60% regarded economic-social concern as their priority. Regarding the demand for universal suffrage, no matter in 07/08 or 2012, the supporters of Frederick Fung and Lau Chin-Shek overlapped in a comparatively middle position.

Concerning the political party factors, Table 3 shows that, 56% of supporters of James To's list claimed their main concern was the political party, demonstrating the strongest party sense. The corresponding figure for Jasper Tsang's list was 49%, showing that the party sense was not weak either. In contrast, the main concern of the supporters of Lau Chin-Shek's, Frederick Fung's and Bruce Liu's lists was the individual candidate, while even 31% of Bruce Liu's supporters claimed their main concern was vote allocation.

With regard to the background of the supporters, Table 4 shows that, 54% of supporters of Jasper Tsang's list were aged 50 or above, while supporters of other lists were mostly 30-50 years old. Concerning the voters' academic attainment, supporters of Jasper Tsang's list had a relatively lower education level whereas supporters of James To's list possessed a higher education level, while supporters of other lists again lay in between. Regarding the voters' occupation, an interesting phenomenon was found. Among the supporters of Jasper Tsang's and Frederick Fung's lists, the proportion of executives and professionals was relatively low. While this was understandable, the proportion of Lau Chin-Shek's supporters was surprisingly higher than that of James To's list. This brought an important message to us.

Combining the analysis of source of votes of Lau Chin-Shek's and the ADPL's lists in different districts, a conclusion could be reached. Although Lau Chin-Shek has always represented the labour class, the attractiveness of his recently more moderate political demands to the middle-class voters was no less than the Democratic Party's. In a political spectrum, Lau Chin-Shek and the ADPL could at present be considered as overlapping in the position of moderate democrats. Yet, the power of the ADPL was mainly concentrated in Sham Shui Po which was largely composed of the grassroots, while Lau Chin-Shek had seized quite a lot of the ADPL's votes from districts like Yau Tsim Mong and Kowloon City where more middle-class voters could be found. Analyzing from a narrow view, this is an internal struggle of the pro-democratic camp. Analyzing from a broad view, this is a question of how a political camp should position itself.

Kowloon West is a special constituency. The split between pro-China and pro-democratic camps are very clear-cut, with no middle forces. Fighting for the votes of the middle forces becomes an internal question of the pro-democratic camp. Yet, long-term speaking, those votes from the middle forces could not merely be attached to the leaders of the political parties and labour unions in the district, not because they are not capable, but their levels and roles are different. This is the most important message the Kowloon West constituency brings to us.

Table 1: Flow of votes in 2 elections

	Jasper Tsang's list	Frederick Fung, Bruce Liu	Lau Chin-Shek, James To's list	Have not voted last time
Frederick Fung	0%	55%	9%	24%
Lau Chin-Shek	6%	12%	21%	18%
Jasper Tsang's list	91%	12%	6%	24%
James To's list	3%	7%	59%	27%
Bruce Liu	0%	12%	5%	8%

Table 2: Voters' political orientation - Proportion of voters who:

	Jasper Tsang's list	Frederick Fung	Lau Chin-Shek	James To's list
Took part in July 1 Demonstration	6%	27%	28%	51%
Were satisfied with HKSARG	31%	10%	14%	2%
Were "half" satisfied with HKSARG	57%	37%	39%	21%
Were dissatisfied with HKSARG	10%	52%	46%	77%
Chose basing on candidates' political attitude	30%	24%	30%	63%
Chose basing on candidates' economic and livelihood policies	60%	60%	62%	28%
Supported direct election of CE by 2012	36%	59%	60%	79%
Supported direct election of all LC members by 2012	32%	59%	60%	79%

Table 3: Main considerations for choosing candidates

	Jasper Tsang's list	Frederick Fung	Lau Chin-Shek	James To's list	Bruce Liu
Candidate factor	25%	76%	80%	32%	45%
Political party factor	49%	14%	15%	56%	11%
Vote allocation concern	2%	3%	1%	3%	31%

Table 4: Voters' background - Proportion of:

	Jasper Tsang's list	Frederick Fung	Lau Chin-Shek	James To's list
Male	62%	46%	44%	61%
Female	38%	54%	56%	39%
18-29 years old	11%	22%	19%	17%
30-49 years old	35%	46%	55%	47%
50 years old or above	54%	32%	26%	36%
Voters possessing primary education level or below	17%	17%	8%	12%
Voters possessing tertiary education level or above	29%	32%	39%	47%
Executives and professionals	25%	28%	45%	41%
Clerical and service workers	18%	22%	18%	16%
Manual workers	9%	10%	7%	9%
Full-time housewives	16%	16%	13%	8%