Hong Kong elections: why victorious opposition camp has to keep wary eye on swing voters – and has no room for complacency despite massive haul of seats

Poll watchers pointed out that while the pro-democracy bloc won 86 per cent of the 452 seats up for grabs across the city, their share of the votes was not as stunningly huge as the proportion of seats they swept suggested. The bloc garnered a total of 1.6 million votes, or 55 per cent of the valid votes cast; while the pro-establishment camp got 1.2 million votes, or 41 per cent. The remaining 4 per cent went to the non-affiliated independents.

In the 2015 district council polls, the average share of votes garnered by pan-democrats in the constituencies they contested was 47 per cent. They won 116 seats, compared with 292 grabbed by the pro-establishment camp that year. Thus, on Sunday, the pan-democrats gained from an 8 percentage point swing in their favour, as more moderate voters or fence-sitters who sometimes could be classified as mildly blue, the colour assigned to the pro-establishment camp, or mildly yellow, the pro-democracy bloc, batted for them.

But under the first-past-the-post voting system adopted for district council elections, the bigger vote share translated into the disproportionately high number of seats bagged by the bloc that contributed to the immediate sense of accomplishment.

Former transport and housing minister Anthony Cheung Bing-leung noted the magnifying effect of the first-past-the-post system.

“Public sentiment is actually not that one-sided as the election results indicated. From Beijing’s perspective, it need not spell the end of the world although there is cause for concern,” said Cheung, who is also a political scientist.

Over the years, in deeply divided Hong Kong, the pan-democrats used to get roughly 55 to 60 per cent of the total vote share.