Elections and politics in Hong Kong: megathread

[urutzizu]

Elections for the District Councils will be held on Sunday. Every Seat is being contested.

It will be the first test of public opinion of Hong Kong people since the current crisis started. All indications are that Carrie Lam is universally unpopular, and this will likely drag down the Pro-Establishment/Peking bloc. But perhaps the recently increasing violence by some Protestors will have caused their public support to waver? Either way, losses for the Pro-Establishment Bloc are expected.

The pro-establishment Bloc currently controls all district councils. Unlike in the LegCo there are no functional constituencies, i.e. Constituencies elected by Business groups etc. loyal to the pro- Establishment bloc.

As stands right now, the pro-establishment Camp has 327 Seats, the pro democrats 124.
Map:
 
By Lmmnhn - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45488467
Red   = Pro-Establishment
Green= Pro-Democrat

Instead 452 Seats will be elected by FPTP. 27 Seats are ex-officio.
Here is a Site that gives an overview of all candidates contesting and constituency boundaries including a results simulator: https://vote4.hk/en/

Two or more pro-democratic camp candidates are running in 33 constituencies, two or more pro-establishment camp candidates in 30 constituencies. Additionally Protestors have accused the Pro-Establishment camp of running dummy candidate independents who claim to be pro-democrat in some constituencies to split the vote.

The Figurehead of the Protest Movement Joshua Wong has been barred from running in the election since advocating or promoting self-determination is contrary to the content of the declaration that HK law requires a candidate to make to uphold the Basic Law and pledge allegiance to the HKSAR. Joshua Wong claims he does not support splittism. Kelvin Lam is running as his replacement in the Constituency of South Horizons West.

[urutzizu]

As of 6.30pm, close to 2.5 million people - or 60 per cent of all registered voters - have cast their votes. The turnout has already surpassed the previous record of 2.2 million voters in the 2016 legislative council elections.
Is expected of reach 70pct at the close of polls.
Good news for pan-democrats.

[urutzizu]

Final Turnout: 71.2%

Counting has started and it is looking good for pan-democrats.
Occupy student leaders Tommy Cheung, Lester Shum, Eddie Chan and Kelvin Lam (Joshua Wong substitute) win in their respective constituencies, the first two ousting incumbent pro-establishment members.

[urutzizu]

Junius Ho is out. He is one of the most outspoken and controversial pro-Peking politicans, who has said that pro-independence people should be "killed mercilessly", and was shaking hands with white-clad men on the night a mob attacked protesters and other passengers in Yuen Long station. He was stabbed with a knife by rioters a few weeks ago. He lost his re-election bid in the Lok Tsui constituency in Tuen Mun to the Democratic Party’s Lo Chun-yu.

[urutzizu]

Isn't LegCo only 50% elected with the other using a corporativist type of election?

No way the Chinese let the pro-democracy camp ever be in control of Hong Kong

As jaiChind said (I had typed this already before i saw his post), 40 Seats are elected by common people while 30 are elected by special interest groups. So theoretically the pro-democrats could win a majority, the issue is that the 40 direct seats are elected by what is in name a proportional system (in reality a comical SNTV system) that insures that there will always be a significant minority of direct seats going to the pro-peking camp that combine with the vast majority 30 other seats (the law and education special interest groups do elect pro-democrats) to a majority, despite only winning a minority of the vote.  

The district councils however are elected by FPTP, which is why the pan-democrats will dominate. If LegGo used FPTP for the elected seats (like under Colonial Rule) they could outvote and win control of the LegCO.

Also I wonder if the 27 exofficio seats, that are always pro-bejing could prevent the pan-democrats from taking control in all councils (like Islands)?

And as to Junius Ho, he is a very interesting figure. While being rabidly anti-protester/and anti-splittist, he is one of the very few in the pro-peking camp to be pro-tiannmen protesters. (he was the only pro-peking legislator to vote to commemorate them). Perhaps because he is less pro-CCP and more (KMT-style) chinese nationalist (the 1989 Protesters were nationalist), like, incidentally, Jaichind?  

[urutzizu]

Junius Ho is out. He is one of the most outspoken and controversial pro-Peking politicans, who has said that pro-independence people should be "killed mercilessly", and was shaking hands with white-clad men on the night a mob attacked protesters and other passengers in Yuen Long station. He was stabbed with a knife by rioters a few weeks ago. He lost his re-election bid in the Lok Tsui constituency in Tuen Mun to the Democratic Party’s Lo Chun-yu.

Too bad as I rather like him.  Of course he will be back.  He is fairly polarizing so it is not surprise that he will lose in a FPTP system.  He will be back next year in LEGCO election where is will most likely be elected in a multi-member district election.

How libertarian of you!

To be fair there isnt much ideological consistency with many people on Hong Kong issue. Just like the "leftists" supporting a oligarchy-controlled Government (and that is literally what the Curry Lamb Government is) against a actual peoples revolution. And the same with certain american right-wingers on the other side of the debate. But I digress.

To get back on topic the Pro-Peking Camp could win just 2/10 elected Seats in Islands and still control the council due to the ex-officio members. In one outstanding seat there are two pro-dem Candidates. So that would be a  very questionable outcome.

[urutzizu]

Pan-democrats will have won a majority of elected seats on every single Council, and a Majority of Seats in all Councils except Islands.

It seems they have won 7/10 elected Seats on Islands council, but due to the the fact that 8/18 Council Seats are unelected rural exofficio members, decidedly pro-establishment, the pan-establishment will hold Islands Council. But the Exofficio members do not hold enough of a sway in the other councils to deprive the pan-democrats of a majority (there are none in Kowloon because its a urban district). Islands by far has the highest proportion of nonelected steats of any council.

[urutzizu]

My back-of-the-envelope vote share calculation gives Pan-Democratic 59% Pan-Establishment 39% which looks a lot like 2008 LegCo (59.50% vs 39.75%), 2004 LegCo (62.44% vs 37.40%), and 2000 LegCo (60.56% vs 34.94%).  Once we accept that this election will become a HK wide election with the protests as the main topic vs a low turnout local election about local issue I would argue that Pan-Establishment at 39% is not bad given the massive turnout.

The vote share is according to this results site: https://dce2019.thestandnews.com/
1,420,749 Votes (57%) Pan-Democratic
1,021,738 Votes (41%) Pan Establishment

Which would mean that it is very close to the 2016 LegCo elections. The electoral system and the massive mobilization and consolidation of the pan-democratic vote may have made the victory appear greater then it actually was (and certainly spun the foreign media coverage in that regard too).

[urutzizu]

RTHK reports that the Government is considering using emergency powers to delay the election, because of the Virus resurgence in the City. More about that here, but basically, Virus cases seeded from small clusters have exploded, Hong Kong's hospitals are close to being overwhelmed, and there is little hope from Officials that the outbreak will be brought under control by September. Conventional Wisdom would suggest the Government is screwed, and the Population is not really adhering to Government mandates on social distance anymore. Irony is that the cause for this is that Hong Kong decided to take the Western path of Virus Suppression and not the Chinese path of elimination, partly because Hong Kong's political system does not have the tools for it (yet). But alas things are what they are, and the pro-Beijing bloc will have every incentive to try and push the election back and the pan-democrats will try to fight it. Will end up in court probably.

[urutzizu]

The 12 include four incumbent lawmakers, Civic Party Alvin Yeung Ngok-kiu, Dennis Kwok and Kwok Ka-ki, as well as accountancy sector legco member Kenneth Leung as well as (as expected) Joshua Wong, Ventus Lau Wing-hong, Gwyneth Ho Kwai-lam and Alvin Cheng Kam-mun, district councillors Cheng Tat-hung, Lester Shum, Tiffany Yuen Ka-wai and Fergus Leung Fong-wai. So not all from Localism bloc, also prominent Pan-democrats.

This makes no sense.  The number of deaths in HK is basically nil.  in India random samples in Delhi implies that around 15% of the population has the virus.  Random samples in Mumbai slums seems to indicate that around 57% of the Mumbai slum residents has the virus which implies they are close to heard immunity yet the number of deaths is tiny in comparison to these estimates.   It seems clear to me how lethal this virus is has gone done dramatically over the lat few months.  The Anti-Establishment primary were also held with no increase in deaths related to virus.   There is no reason to delay the election.

Indian slums have much less elderly population as Hong Kong does, so mortality with a immunity approach would likely be much higher in Hong Kong. Serology studies from the Bronx, which is probably more comparable, would suggest at least 5000 deaths on basis of about 40-50% immunity. I cannot see an Immunity Approach being tried in any East Asian society though. I assume it is quite possible that Hong Kong manages to reduce infections relatively fast as with the surge in March-April and the delay does not materialize, the trouble with that though is that last time they were overwhelmingly connected with overseas travel, and as strong quarantine measures were brought in that cut them down significantly, this time it is widespread community transmission on a much larger level, which is more difficult to deal with. Maybe the Government does not want to face the Court challenge and lets them go ahead. But I think that if they go ahead in this environment, the pro-Beijing bloc will make even greater losses. Ultimately Beijing already has the Prize (Security Law) though, they probably do not care so much about the majority on the Council anymore, which was already in doubt.