Dear Professor Wong,

Thanks, I shall be there punctually. Currently I am still going through your journal article twice to make sure I am asking the right question, and at the same time preparing some question with regard to pursuing an academic career.

I have been talking to Professor Degolyer about some questions that I have, and he suggests me to gather more opinion from our fellows in the academic fields. (He is an extremely busy person, so it is also very hard to have some consultation with him as well...)

Parts of the questions are related to the definition of tactical voting, as yourself have been engineering some of the apps for reference of the public, I wonder how would you consider:

1) Compensatory voting in District/Legislative, Geographical/Functional

It appears to me that, as described in your paper, district election for the opposition can be motivated by democratic ideals, but if in general election opposition party did not receive very well, then it would consequentially affect its vote share if they would appeal to voters on democratic ideals in the next district election as opposition party is not likely to rule/have important influence on government.

Still, in the case of Hong Kong, can we argue the contrary that, many of the voters would feel district council is more of  a "functional organisation" whereas the legislative council is more of a balance and check, so that people would feel more important to elect pragmatic councilmen to district council, and legislative council with more of an opposition-mindset councilmen. (The view from a material viewpoint is also the same, that district council yields more direct gain as voters weigh greater) [Wong and Wan, 2007]

The above argument is raised as a hypothesis in view of the mindset displayed in the geographical/functional constituency voters, that many of them did not choose to vote democratic party in geographical constituency because of the limited number of parties in the Pan-dem in functional constituency DC2 , as suggested by Medias and DP themselves after the election.

The statistics do show strong connection of district-legislative election, but I wonder how would you have considered how likely in the opposite that such "compensatory mindset" would affect firstly, the GC/FC in legco election, and legco-district election. It is perhaps more of a qualitative approach, right now we lack data some everything is still hypothetical, but it was something I encountered during my research.

Secondly, can we call that a tactical voting? Is there any discourse over the phenomenon in the past?

2) Consciousness in Tactical Voting

As the election results appear, almost of the constituency came out with a distortion of voting, that we see the last winner and the first runner-up as a noticeably narrow margin than of first runner-up and second runner-up. I thought it suggests pretty strong evidence considering the different margins between the players to identify the behaviour of tactical voting. [G.Cox, 2001]

Still, in every year in HKUPOP or a survey conducted by Prof Ma in 2001 on the matter of tactical voting, the statistics came out pretty weak. I am not entirely sure about that.

Does tactical voting necessarily require the consciousness of voters, or is it a pure thing of observation from the results?



The questions do not stop here, but it is just some of the initial thoughts I have been developing since I have decided to pursue a Master degree and be doing similar researches like yourself are. Apart from the academic questions, some friendly advice on studying a Master degree or perhaps a PhD would be very welcomed. I look forward to be able to exchange ideas and thoughts face-to-face with you that day. 

Yours faithfully,

Andrew