Ordinary Gweilo

The big story was the collapse of the Liberal Party in the geographical constituencies, but there were two other things that caught my attention.

The first was that the pan-democrats were incredibly fortunate with the results.  For example, in NT East they got 57% of the vote and won 71% of the seats, and something similar happened on Hong Kong Island.  The DAB piled up more votes than they needed, and independent (pro-Beijing) candidates such as Scarlett Pong Oi-Lan in NT East and Priscilla Leung Mei-fun in Kowloon West must have taken votes off the Liberal Party.

The second was that the one party who ought to be really satisfied with their performance were the League of Social Democrats (who are not as moderate as the name might imply).  They won three seats, and who would have predicted that Leung Kwok Hung (“Long Hair”) would get more votes than any of the other pan-democrat lists in NT East?  Yes, by  less than 600 votes, but at one stage the SCMP was predicting that he might lose.

Ah, opinion polls.  What’s this I see in the SCMP?  Oh, yes – Exit polls largely accurate despite fears about response rate (subscription required):

The main exit polls appear to have gauged support for many of the candidates accurately despite pollsters’ concerns that a poor response rate could compromise their reliability.

Questions about exit polls caused some of the biggest controversies of a largely uneventful campaign. Pan-democrats complained that their Beijing loyalist rivals might set up groups to conduct exit polls and use the results to adjust election strategy. They reminded voters of their right to refuse exit pollsters information. Many voters seemed to heed the reminder, and some even said they had lied to pollsters.

The value of the exit polls, including the one by the University of Hong Kong’s public opinion programme to help broadcasters shape their coverage on election night, was called into question. Some candidates cited leaks of exit poll data when they issued “situation critical” calls to bring out more of their voters.

Initial results, released yesterday, from two exit polls – by the HKU programme and Hong Kong Research Association – indicated a response rate of about 50 per cent. The association said the 50 per cent level was barely acceptable to produce representative projections.

While its projections were largely reliable, its results indicated Audrey Eu Yuet-mee, who was second on the Civic Party ticket contesting the Hong Kong Island constituency, stood an “extremely slim chance” of winning. However, Ms Eu won, with her ticket taking 26.4 per cent of the votes cast by the 313,429 electors in the constituency.

In the New Territories West constituency, its poll gave Selina Chow Liang Shuk-yee of the Liberal Party and Fernando Cheung Chiu-hung of the Civic Party a “relatively bigger chance” of winning. But Mrs Chow won only 5.4 per cent of the vote and Dr Cheung just 7 per cent. Both lost. The association’s data also gave James Tien Pei-chun, of the Liberal Party, a “relatively bigger chance” of winning in New Territories East. He also lost.

The HKU public opinion programme’s exit poll gave five of the six eventual winners in Hong Kong Island a very high chance of victory. In New Territories East, it gave five of the seven eventual winners a very high chance and in New Territories West correctly predicted five of the eight winners.

This is obviously a new definition of “largely reliable”.  We got several of our predictions wrong, but some were correct, so that’s OK then.

Independent pollster Li Pang-kwong, of Lingnan University, who did not conduct exit polling on Sunday, believed the discrepancies were partly attributable to interviewees giving false answers.

Yes, people sometimes lie when asked how they will vote or have voted, and it’s something pollsters have to deal with.

The Legco elections take place today, and I have to admit that I’m having trouble taking them seriously.

The first problem is that we are not electing a government – oh no, that isn’t the way things work here.

That leads directly to the second problem – politics in Hong Kong is more about posturing than policy.  It is meaningless for a party to promise smaller class sizes, higher welfare benefits, or lower taxes, when they won’t have the opportunity to implement the policies (one might say the same about the Liberal Democrats in the UK, but at least they pretend they could form a government). 

So in broad terms we have two groupings: the pan-democrats and the pro-Beijing parties.  Those labels are not very helpful, because not many people in Hong Kong are either anti-democracy or anti-Beijing, but I suppose we all understand what they mean.  Another way of looking at it is that the pro-Beijing parties (the DAB and the Liberal Party) tend to be more supportive of the Hong Kong government, and the pan-democrats normally oppose the government, but again that’s not terribly useful.          

The third problem is the voting system.  Hong Kong has 5 large constituencies, each electing between 5 and 8 legislators.  If this system was used in the UK it would produce a more representative House of Commons because the Liberal Democrats would be guaranteed at least one seat in almost all the constituencies. In Hong Kong it also produces a fairly representative Legco, with the main advantage (cynics say) of ensuring that the pro-Beijing parties are well-represented in Legco – at least in part because the “pan-democrats” are generally not as organized or disciplined as the pro-Beijing parties. 

Take New Territories East, which has no less than 10 different lists.  There are two lists for the “pro-Beijing” parties: the DAB expect to win two seats and the Liberal Party’s James Tien would expect to win another.  That leaves four more seats, and you might expect the pan-democrats to win all of them.  The problem is that they have five different lists (unlike last time when there was a single “7.1 United Front” list). The Democratic Party alone has two lists, the second one apparently being for their younger members.  Then there’s The Frontier (Emily Lau Wai-Hing), and the Civic Party (Ronny Tong Ka-Wah), who were also on the “7.1 United Front” list 4 years ago.  There’s also the League of Social Democrats (Leung Kwok Hung, aka ‘Long Hair), who wasn’t.

The problem for the pan-democrats is that the result is largely going to depend how the votes are split between these five lists, and it is quite possible (based on opinion polls) that Scarlett Pong Oi-Lan (running as an independent, but regarded as ‘pro-Beijing’) could edge out either Emily Lau or ‘Long Hair’.  On the other hand, the pan-democrats could get five seats. 

The biggest weakness of the ‘party list’ system is that if a list gets get too few votes to elect a single candidate, none of those votes really count.  Equally, if a list gets enough votes to elect one candidate, but not enough to elect a second candidate then again the excess votes also don’t count.  The solution is STV (single transferrable vote) , which has the added advantage that voters could choose their preferred candidates rather than being stuck with the party lists.  You’d like to vote Liberal but can’t stand James Tien?  Well, you would be able to do just that – but don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

The fourth problem is that it all seems much more showbiz that serious politics.  Some candidates have been using empty-headed celebrities to promote their election bids, and the debates (shown on Cable TV) have seen a lot of shouting but very little serious discussion – which is hardly surprising when they are conducted in a public open space and the 30 or so candidates are flanked by noisy supporters.  It’s almost as if they really don’t want us to take it too seriously.    

A glorious rag-bag of policies from one of the candidates who isn’t going to win a seat in Legco on Sunday. 

I love the sheer randomness of the policies – some good, some bad (cancelling petrol tax), and some just a bit baffling (what exactly is the current toilet ratio?).

ilet