Massive polls push for vote of confidence

The reformed Legislative Council election drew 1.35 million - or over 30 percent of voters - to the polling stations when it was held across the geographical constituencies in 2021, when Hong Kong was still subject to Covid social-distancing restrictions.

A blunt question facing the administration is how many voters will turn out this Sunday for the district council election that - as with the Legco poll, has also been radically overhauled to be patriots-only - will be held for the first time since the reform.

Perhaps any figures lower than the 2021 turnout would be considered a setback.

A great deal has occurred to the voter base since the legislature election.

The most crucial of all is that a number of voters have emigrated to take advantage of the UK's BNO visa program and relaxed work visa schemes offered to SAR passport holders by Canada and Australia.

In any case, this group of voters would be unlikely to show up even if they were still around in Hong Kong in view of their political stance.

This should surprise no one. As former chief executive Leung Chun-ying reportedly said in a media interview, even Beijing would not expect the opposition to change overnight.

If the administration bothered to continuously update the register, it may discover it contains fewer voters which, in theory, should make it easier to achieve an expected turnout rate of 30 percent or above.

It is believed that those voting in 2021 on the heels of the electoral reforms agreed with the political reform and they continue to form the base on which the establishment may rely.

The government has been making an all-out effort with a tidal wave of publicity and enormous legwork to win over people to get them just to cast their votes, rather than to vote for any particular party.

The amount of manpower hours and resources devoted to this election will likely exceed those of the Legco poll.

For example, civil servants are being asked to troop to the polling stations together with family members. Government contractors have also received special reminders to give their employees enough time to go to the polling stations to vote.

While Chief Secretary for Administration Eric Chan Kwok-ki dismissed as malicious some online claims that civil servants stood to be punished if they did not vote, he and his boss Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu have been truly relentless in marshaling civil servants to do so.

In view of the local civil service culture, it is more likely than not that they will vote to achieve a pretty high turnout rate among civil servants.

This election is rather unusual. Most ironic is that candidates seem to have left to the government campaign jobs that would have been taken up by the various political parties of candidates in a normal electoral exercise.

Yesterday the DAB tried to be helpful by declaring urgency in some constituencies.

This made it look at least a little better for the party by being seen to be doing its part to get voters to vote even if this was just days before the election.

Will the turnout rate be higher than 30 percent?

Whatever the outcome, the administration can speak with confidence that it has done its best to push up the turnout rate.