The 2019 Hong Kong District Council elections were held on 24 November 2019 for all 18 District Councils of Hong Kong. 452 seats from all directly elected constituencies, out of the 479 seats in total, were contested. Nearly three million people voted, equivalent to 71 per cent of registered voters, an unprecedented turnout in the electoral history of Hong Kong. The election was widely viewed as a de facto referendum on the concurrent anti-extradition protests.
All pro-Beijing parties suffered major setbacks and losses, including the flagship pro-Beijing party Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), which received its largest defeat in history, losing 96 seats. Executive Councillor Regina Ip's New People's Party failed to obtain a single seat, and was ousted from all District Councils as a result. Dozens of prominent pro-Beijing heavyweights lost their campaigns for re-election, including Junius Ho, a controversial anti-protest figure who had expressed support for the triads behind the mob attack in Yuen Long on 21 July.
In contrast, the pro-democracy camp in conjunction with the localist camp achieved its biggest landslide victory in the history of Hong Kong, gaining absolute majority in votes and electoral seats in all of the 18 District Councils and tripling their seats from around 124 to about 388. The pro-Beijing parties can only retain their control in only one District Council due to their advantage in ex officio seats in the Islands District Council. Many pro-democracy candidates who actively participated in the protests were elected, including convenor of the Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF) Jimmy Sham.
This election is described by some as potentially the last free election in Hong Kong, as the national security law and election overhaul imposed by Beijing would vet democrats for the next election. More than 70 per cent of elected District Councillors resigned or were disqualified over the following two years due to various reasons.
Boundary changes
In July 2017, following a review of the numbers of elected seats for each District Council having regard to local population forecasts, the Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC) proposed to create 21 new elected seats across 10 District Councils: One new seat for each of Kowloon City, Yau Tsim Mong and Tsuen Wan District Councils; Two new seats for each of Sham Shui Po, Kwai Tsing, Tuen Mun and Sai Kung District Councils; Three new seats for each of Kwun Tong and Sha Tin District Councils; and Four new seats for the Yuen Long District Council.
Accordingly, the total number of elected seats for the 2019 elections increased by 21 from 431 to 452.
Gerrymandering concerns
Some pro-democracy District Councillors accused the EAC of gerrymandering, stating that the borders of their constituencies were altered "unreasonably" to adversely affect their parties' election prospects. EAC chairman Barnabas Fung responded that the changes were based purely on an objective calculation. "Factors with political implications would definitely not be taken into consideration," Fung said.
Background
Project Storm
In April 2017, Occupy Central co-founder Benny Tai proposed the "Project Storm" strategy to win the majority of the District Council seats for the pro-democrats in the coming election. He stated that by winning a majority of the some 400 District Council seats, the pro-democracy camp could gain an additional 117 seats of the District Council subsectors on the 1,200-member Election Committee which elects the Chief Executive. Tai believed that by making it harder for Beijing to manipulate the Chief Executive election, it would compel Beijing to restart the stalled political reform after its restrictive proposal was voted down in 2015 in the aftermath of the Occupy protests.
Power for Democracy, a group that coordinated different parties and groups in the pro-democracy camp, worked with pro-democrats to identify suitable candidates for all 452 constituencies. The group also held rounds of non-binding primaries to select a candidate if more than one pro-democrat was interested in running in the same constituency. However, the camp still risked doubling up in about 30 constituencies.