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

This year's Legislative Council election has produced some eye-catching results, including the safe election of "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-Hung and James Tien, the failure of the "7.1 United Front", and the departure of senior legislator Andrew Wong. All these happened in New Territories East, and it would help us understand the development of local politics much more, if we would study the constituency in detail.

Our data was collected on the election day outside 24 polling stations in the constituency. It comprised 2,265 successful cases and 227 partially completed cases, with a response rate of 67.2%. The research design and other information of the survey will be published in our HKU POP Site by the end of this week.

Let us first analyze the victory of "Long Hair" Leung Kwok-Hung. Leung Kwok-Hung, as a long-time street-level fighter, won with high vote in New Territories East. Although the reason somehow could be traced, it shocked the public and the political circle. The focus of the discussion, was how "Long Hair" could handle his contradictory roles within and outside the establishment. What irritated the political circle was how to deal with this unwelcome person. No wonder since Leung Kwok-Hung had been elected, he was then all along the target of the media. Seemingly the social meaning of "Leung Kwok-Hung's phenomenon" has yet to be further investigated.

Leung Kwok-Hung's entry into the Council was the decision of 60,925 voters, while the proportions of male, voters aged 18 - 29 years old and with higher education attainment were relatively higher (Table 1). Leung Kwok-Hung has been fighting for the rights of the grassroots all the way, yet, his support was mainly from the young professionals. Probably this was due to his even more popular image as a democracy-fighter. According to our exit poll result, as expected, the supporters of Leung Kwok-Hung were most dissatisfied with the HKSAR Government. Table 2 reveals that, among his supporters, 70% were dissatisfied with the Government, the same as those of Albert Cheng's list in Kowloon East, whereas the satisfaction ratio was only 2%, lower than the 6% of Albert Cheng's list. As the representative of the "Anti-Tung force", even Albert Cheng and "7.1 United Front" were no match for Leung Kwok-Hung.

The number of votes obtained by Leung Kwok-Hung was 3.3 times more than that of 4 years ago. To his supporters, while the legislative space of the Council had already been monopolized by the high-handed government, it would be better to make use of the remaining leeway in the electoral system to send the street-level fighter to the Council to make some noises. This was the voters' opposition against the establishment. It has been shown in our public opinion surveys that the average rating of the April Fifth Action led by "Long Hair" remained low for long. In other words, the public did not expect the April Fifth Action would lead the development of the Council. Against this background, "Long Hair" was still safely elected. Definitely this was an active opposition against the establishment. This was the essence of the "Long Hair's phenomenon", the same as the "Tai Pan's phenomenon".

Regarding the proportions of voters taking part in the July 1 Demonstration, calling for universal suffrage and choosing basing on candidates' political attitude, those of Leung Kwok-Hung's supporters were the highest among the 6 lists, and were even higher than the "7.1 United Front" (Table 2). This brought out another interesting phenomenon. The "Diamond List", consisted of Andrew Cheng, Emily Lau, Ronny Tong, Wong Sing-Chi, Richard Tsoi, Shirley Ho and Ricky Or, claimed to be "7.1 United Front". Nevertheless, only 39% of their supporters had taken part in the July 1 Demonstration, which was lower than the 45% of the Leung Kwok-Hung's supporters. While the July 1 Demonstration was used as the appeal, and Richard Tsoi was even the main convenor of the first July 1 Demonstration, its attractiveness to the participants was however apparently lower than "Long Hair". Seemingly it was inconsistent with its name "7.1 United Front".

When one takes a more in-depth look, the reason was that the combination of "7.1 United Front" could not satisfy the demands of all the democratic voters and seemingly could meet the needs of neither side. None of the 7 candidates and the bodies they represented in the "United Front" could represent the whole "United Front". It was also due to this reason, this article has not adopted the name of "Andrew Cheng's list". Overall speaking, although 37% of the "United Front"'s supporters claimed the combination of lists was their main consideration (Table 3), which was far more than any other lists in Hong Kong, the "United Front" could neither absorb "Long Hair"'s supporters who were extremely dissatisfied with the government, nor the relatively moderate Andrew Wong's. It was therefore destined being unable to include all the vote sources of the democratic camp. Grouping uneasily into a "Diamond List" with vague ideology to run for the election in a large constituency in fact would only result in a waste of the remaining votes.

The democratic camp's "Diamond List" strategy in fact has led to the safe election of James Tien. Referring back to the analysis of voters' background in Table 1, it was not difficult to discover that the background of supporters of James Tien and the "United Front" was very similar. Both were mainly 30 - 49 years old, with around 35% - 40% as professionals possessing tertiary education level, and around 10% as full-time housewives. In other words, a considerable proportion of James Tien's support should be from the previous supporters of the democratic camp. This point could also be proved from the analysis of the flow of votes in the two elections.

Table 4 shows that, excluding the 4 lists with support ratings less than 5% in the last election, about 85% of voters who supported Leung Kwok-Hung and Lau Kong-Wah's list last time did not change their mind. However, among the supporters of the joint list of Emily Lau and Richard Tsoi in the last election, around 19% had shifted to more radical Leung Kwok-Hung, 17% had shifted to more moderate James Tien, while only 60% were left to the "United Front". For the lists of Andrew Cheng and Wong Sing-Chi of the Democratic Party, only a respective of 71% and 77% were left to the "United Front", a considerable percentage of votes have flowed to Leung Kwok-Hung and James Tien.

Table 3 reveals that, although James Tien took part in the election in his capacity as the Chairman of the Liberal Party, only 20% of his supporters claimed their main consideration was the political party factor, whereas 70% said the individual candidate factor was their main consideration. This was completely different from the supporters of the "7.1 United Front" and the DAB. This demonstrates that, although James Tien has won the election, his district resources and supporters' centripetal forces towards the Liberal Party were not yet consolidated.

Last of all, we would like to discuss the defeat of Andrew Wong and the victory of Li Kwok-Ying, who ranked second in Lau Kong-Wah's list. Lau Kong-Wah's list obtained 95,434 votes and thus won 2 seats. Of course this had to attribute to their deep-rooted district force, yet, the electoral strategy of the whole camp was also vital to the success.

Last time Andrew Wong obtained 44,899 votes. However, Table 4 reveals that, two-thirds of his votes had been lost to various lists this year, with 21% flowing to James Tien, 17% to Lau Kong-Wah's list, 11% to Tso Wung-Wai's list, 8% to both the "7.1 United Front" and Leung Kwok-Hung. Regarding the defeat of Andrew Wong, apart from his individual performance, the participation of James Tien and Tso Wung-Wai, who had altogether seized one-third of his votes, was also another key factor. When one takes a careful look of the characteristics of the supporters, no matter regarding the proportion of voters who took part in the July 1 Demonstration, the satisfaction rate with the HKSAR Government or the degree of the importance attached to political issues, the supporters of Andrew Wong were quite similar to those of the other two, and were even more that those of other democratic camp's lists.

Therefore, we can deduce that, if Tso Wung-Wai, who possessed very similar career background as Andrew Wong, did not take part in the election and left the votes to Andrew Wong, the chance for Li Kwok-Ying to win the election with his second place would be greatly lowered. The pro-China camp could motivate Tso Wung-Wai to run for the election, yet without weakening the support of Lau Kong-Wah's list. This was a success in the strategy. If the pro-China camp delegated David Chu, but not Tso Wung-Wai to run for the election, the result would not be that satisfying.

The result in New Territories East reveals the "Diamond List" strategy was not successful. First, the political positioning was not clear. Second, the chance of winning a seat with remaining votes was wasted. Third, it facilitated the growth of unconventional forces. No doubt there was a relation between the risky strategy of the democratic-camp's "Diamond List", with incidents such as the emergence of "Long Hair" in New Territories East, the success of James Tien in opening up the moderate vote source and the DAB's seizure of the second seat.

Table 1: Voters' background - Proportion of:

	K.H.Leung	W.W. Tso	7.1 United Front	James Tien	Andrew Wong	K.W. Lau's list
Male	66%	61%	49%	54%	51%	56%
Female	34%	39%	51%	46%	49%	44%
18-29 years old	44%	32%	29%	30%	25%	13%
30-49 years old	38%	47%	47%	44%	40%	32%
50 years old or above	18%	21%	24%	27%	34%	55%
Voters possessing primary education level or below	10%	16%	12%	12%	16%	30%
Voters possessing tertiary education level or above	44%	30%	39%	35%	22%	11%
Executives and professionals	34%	18%	37%	35%	26%	15%
Manual workers	12%	14%	7%	9%	17%	18%
Student	17%	18%	7%	11%	6%	5%
Full-time housewives	7%	7%	13%	10%	17%	16%
Voters who have not voted before	26%	22%	19%	32%	28%	15%
New Territories indigenous residents	16%	10%	17%	14%	16%	18%

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

	K.H.Leung	W.W. Tso	7.1 United Front	James Tien	Andrew Wong	K.W. Lau's list
Were satisfied with HKSARG	2%	9%	5%	13%	14%	35%
Were "half" satisfied with HKSARG	27%	55%	30%	50%	34%	42%
Were dissatisfied with HKSARG	70%	36%	64%	36%	48%	18%
Took part in July 1 Demonstration	45%	11%	39%	15%	16%	5%
Supported direct election of CE by 2012	79%	57%	72%	61%	46%	43%
Supported direct election of all LC members by 2012	76%	52%	72%	53%	48%	41%
Chose basing on candidates' political attitude	58%	16%	49%	26%	27%	22%
Chose basing on candidates' economic and livelihood policies	33%	61%	40%	64%	65%	60%

Table 3: Main considerations for choosing candidates

	K.H.Leung	W.W. Tso	7.1 United Front	James Tien	Andrew Wong	K.W. Lau's list
Candidate factor	87%	83%	27%	70%	87%	40%
Political party factor	4%	5%	30%	20%	0%	33%
Combination of list	2%	0%	37%	4%	2%	17%

Table 4: Flow of votes in 2 elections

	S.C.Wong's list	K.W. Lau's list	Emily Lau's list	Andrew Cheng's list	Andrew Wong	K.H. Leung	Have not voted last time
K.H. Leung	16%	2%	19%	12%	8%	85%	15%
W.W. Tso	1%	4%	2%	2%	11%	0%	4%
7.1 United Front	77%	3%	60%	71%	8%	11%	35%
James Tien	3%	5%	17%	12%	21%	0%	24%
Andrew Wong	4%	1%	0%	2%	34%	4%	6%
K.W. Lau's list	0%	84%	2%	2%	17%	0%	17%