Voters turn out in force for crucial Hong Kong election

If the democrats lose just four seats overall, they will forfeit the one-third voting bloc they need to veto bills, stacking the already skewed legislature even more in favor of Beijing.

The more strident independence activists – slammed by Beijing and Hong Kong authorities as acting illegally by promoting the breakaway – were banned by the government from running in Sunday’s election, a move which sparked outrage over political censorship.

In the “Occupy Central” campaigns in Hong Kong in 2014, residents staged mass sit-ins to bargain for their demand that candidates in the 2017 election for Hong Kong chief executive be selected through public nomination.

Long lines formed outside some polling stations as voters flocked to cast ballots for a record number of candidates who fanned out across the city of seven million on election day.

It comes against the backdrop of an economic slowdown in Hong Kong and China, as China undergoes a transition itself from its traditional manufacturing base to a more service-led economy.

Hong Kong has been the scene of increasingly bitter political turmoil since the last legislative election in 2012.

But wins for the young activists could split the democracy camp’s vote – and end up playing into the hands of pro-Beijing parties. About 31 per cent of those eligible in the geographical districts had turned out by 4.30pm local time, said the government in an emailed statement.

Political analyst Joseph Cheng says he expects new faces in the legislature. That power held by the opposition “is the only thing preventing the government from reintroducing the political reform package against the will of Hong Kong people”, said Mr Chung Kim-wah, a political scientist at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Voters were choosing from among 84 lists of candidates to fill 35 seats in a complex system of geographic constituencies that makes results, expected Monday, hard to predict.

A lack of reliable polling and a system in which lists of candidates vie for multiple seats in each district, make predicting the outcome hard.

Despite the disqualification of six pro-democracy election candidates from the election in July on the grounds that they supported independence, preliminary results showed several localists and young democrats likely winning seats. He planned to vote for the 23-year-old Nathan Law who, along with teen activist Joshua Wong, played a key role leading the 2014 protests.

In addition, 21 candidates have been validly nominated to contest five seats in the District Council (second) functional constituency, commonly known as the “super seats”.

Law will now take up a seat in the Legislative Council (LegCo), Hong Kong’s lawmaking body. However, many believe the deal has failed.

The elections are considered critical because pro-democracy forces are trying to maintain the minimum one-third of seats necessary to block the government from pushing through unpopular legislation, including an electoral overhaul package.

“The situation is highly unoptimistic for pro-establishment [groups], especially for the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong [DAB]”, Choy So-yuk, a former legislator and member of the DAB – a major pro-establishment party in Hong Kong – told the Global Times on Sunday.

The city’s Beijing-backed leader, Leung Chun-ying, rejected any suggestion of interference.