Back

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

Without any significant events, the low-key by-election of the District Council (Tin Wan District) has failed to arouse public attention. However, we, as a group of students being enthusiastic in electoral research, have conducted a research on this by-election with the generous support of the Public Opinion Programme of the University of Hong Kong. Since the nomination period, we have observed, investigated and analysed the whole electoral process from different perspectives. By sharing our findings in this article, we hope that they would contribute to researches on the political culture of Hong Kong.

There were six candidates running for this by-election. As the votes gained by no.1 Chong Yui, no.2 Fung Wa-hing and no. 6 Chan Pak-chuen were less than 100 votes each, only the three candidates with the highest support ratings will be concerned in this article. They are no.3 Wong Huk-kam (1,170 votes), no.4 Chan Fu-ming (1,423 votes) and no. 5 Kwan Man-yau (1,165 votes). Wong Huk-kam was the only candidate from the pro-democracy camp who parachuted into the Tin Wan district. His political petition was his main selling point. Chan Fu-ming was experienced in district affairs. Apart from this, the former-district councilor Miu Wah-chang (a DAB member) has given him full support in this by-election. Kwan Man-yau has also served the district for a long period and he has just joined the Liberal Party. He got 1,639 votes in the District Council Election 2003 (Tin Wan District), 320 votes fewer than the former-district councilor Miu Wah-chang. Based on our pre-election observation, the support ratings of Kwan man-yau was quite stable.

On the surface, this by-election is the campaign among the three major parties. However, according to our observations from the field trips to Tin Wan, only Wong Huk-kam relied on the reputation of his party - Frontier. Though Kwan Man-yau is a member of the Liberal Party, he did not rely on his party as he has joined it for a few months only. Our exit poll result has also revealed that 93% of electorates who voted for him supported Kwan himself, but not his party. As for the winner Chan Fu-ming, even though the former-councilor Miu Wah-chang, a DAB member, supported him, due to various reasons, he did not enthusiastically make use of the support of DAB in his election engineering. Our exit poll has revealed that only 20% of Chan's supporters claimed his political orientation was their main consideration. From this perspective, the competition between political parties in this by-election was not very fierce.

The support rating of Wong Huk-kam has attracted our attention. The advantage of Wong was that he was the only candidate from the pro-democracy camp, therefore his source of votes should be very concentrated. In the 9‧12 LegCo election, 52% of the registered voters in Tin Wan voted for the pro-democracy camp (Tsang Kin-Shing's list, Yeung Sum's list and Audrey Eu's list included). Whether these people would vote for Wong would be crucial to the result of the by-election. According to the exit polls conducted by the Public Opinion Programme in the District Council Election 2003 and the LegCo Election 2004, voters' decisions were mainly based on individual candidates rather than individual political parties while candidates' past performance outweighed their party affiliation. This result was particularly obvious in the District Council Election, which means that it would be quite difficult for Wong to attract those democrats' support. However, his support rating was even higher than that of Kwan, who has focused on district affairs. This shows that the labeling effect of the pro-democracy camp does have its market value in Tin Wan, which is recognized as an old district.

On the other hand, those who voted for Chan and Kwan indeed valued their performance in district affairs. If we assume the total votes they got to be 'district affairs vote' and the votes that Wong got to be 'party affiliation vote', then the ratio of 'district affairs vote' to 'party affiliation vote' is approximately 2 to 1. To make it simple, though the effect of political party helps the pro-democracy camp to attract votes, without good performances in district affairs, the pro-democracy camp can hardly win voters' hearts even with the help of political stars. It is a fact that Cyd Ho Sau Lan, with the help of "July 1 Rally Effect', parachuted into the Kwun Lung district and narrowly defeated Ip Kwok Him. Nevertheless, although it is not a miracle to achieve it again, at least it will not be an easy task.

In fact, in the Council, the DAB starts to discuss democracy while the pro-democracy camp focuses more on district affairs these days. It is far too early to conclude that the two parties have made some concrete improvements, but this shows that neither political orientation nor livelihood policy can be neglected, especially in District Council Election. Perhaps it is time for the pro-democracy camp to pay more attention to district affairs and its livelihood policies.