Main Hong Kong parties big winners in district council poll as voters rally round brand names even if candidates are unknown quantities
- City’s largest pro-establishment parties, DAB and FTU, take lion’s share of seats and votes in first municipal-level poll since overhaul of district councils earlier this year
- ‘As the loyalist camp pushed hard for mobilisation, it was inevitable that the people who could be mobilised were mainly DAB supporters,’ one pundit says
Hong Kong’s leading pro-establishment parties have proved to be the biggest winners in the first “patriots-only” district council election, with observers saying voters had turned to familiar brands and trusted track records in a poll devoid of opposition contenders.
The dominance of big parties in the race for 88 seats returned by the popular vote, out of 470, became clear after polling stations closed at midnight on Sunday.
The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) emerged the clear winner in Sunday’s poll after managing to field a candidate in each of the 44 geographical constituencies, only losing in three of them, and coming away with 41.6 per cent of the vote.
The city’s largest party also achieved landslide victories on several fronts, such as the win for DAB candidate Yiu Ming in Fanling’s Wu Tip Shan constituency, where he became the top grossing winner with more than two-thirds of the local vote, or 20,053 ballots.
The Federation of Trade Unions (FTU) came in as runner-up in the citywide contest after securing 17.6 per cent of the vote and winning 18 seats, with only seven of its candidates losing.
