Hong Kong counts votes from first post-protests poll

Votes are being counted after Hong Kong held its first major elections since the pro-democracy protests in 2014.

Turnout has been the highest since the territory was handed over to China in 1997, leading to a delay in the announcement of results.

Some 58% of Hong Kong's 3.8 million registered voters turned out, compared with 45.2% in 2008.

The main parties competing are divided by their stances on the territory's relationship with Beijing.

Huge queues snaked outside polling stations and some people were unable to vote until nearly four hours after the polls had officially closed.
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Speaking to the South China Morning Post, several people said they believed voting had been poorly planned.

Results in Hong Kong Legislative Council elections are very delayed, a sign of the high turnout - possibly a record-breaking show of interest from local people.

One polling station on Hong Kong Island had to remain open until 3am as locals queued to cast their votes. Bleary-eyed candidates, political activists (and the odd bleary-eyed journalist) are now milling around at the Counting Centre, housed in the Asia World Expo Centre near Hong Kong Airport, waiting to hear the outcome.

Already, though, there have been hundreds of complaints about the election's conduct, from trivial worries that campaign posters were placed in forbidden areas, to more serious allegations of voters and candidate teams being intimidated.

Voters will choose 35 lawmakers based on geographical constituencies and 35 people to represent selected trades.

The city has partial democracy and not everybody can vote for all the seats. Thirty seats are decided by a pool of just 6% of the population.

The vote does not elect the chief executive, who is the head of government, but many analysts believe the outcome of Sunday's vote could have an impact on whether China grants current leader CY Leung a second term in office.

Avery Ng, a radical activist, was restrained by police after he threw a sandwich at Mr Leung while the leader went to vote.

For two months in 2014 protesters demanded his resignation as the Occupy movement occupied major parts of the city and caused political upheaval while calling for the right to elect a leader directly.

​The three main groups competing for seats are:

• pro-Beijing parties including pro-business parties
• traditional pro-democracy parties known as pan-democrats
• localists who want democracy but think there should be more confrontation with the government - some think Hong Kong should have more autonomy, while some advocate full independence
  
  

The seats are in the Legislative Council, which passes laws and budgets in the territory.

There are 30 so-called functional constituencies which represent various professional and commercial groups, such as insurance, catering or education. These are voted in by company representatives in their industries.

Anyone without a functional constituency vote can vote for the final five seats.

The system means that although Hong Kong has 3.8 million voters, 30 of the seats in the Legislative Council are determined by a pool of just 239,724 people.