2003 Hong Kong local elections

2003 Hong Kong local elections

← 1999 23 November 2003 2007 →
All Elected Constituencies 400 (of the 529) seats in all 18 Districts Councils
Registered	2,973,612 4.98%
Turnout	1,066,373 (44.10%) 8.28pp
First party Second party Third party   Leader Yeung Sum Tsang Yok-sing Frederick Fung Party Democratic DAB ADPL Alliance Pro-democracy Pro-Beijing Pro-democracy Last election 86 seats, 24.85% 81 seats, 23.53% 19 seats, 4.70% Seats won 95 62 25 Seat change 17 21 4 Popular vote 223,675 241,202 53,264 Percentage 21.27% 22.94% 5.07% Swing 3.57pp 0.59pp 0.36pp   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader Lau Kong-wah James Tien Ambrose Lau Party Civil Force Liberal HKPA Alliance Pro-Beijing Pro-Beijing Pro-Beijing Last election 11 seats, 2.42% 15 seats, 3.42% 16 seats, 2.65% Seats won 17 14 13 Seat change 3 1 5 Popular vote 25,720 29,108 29,091 Percentage 2.45% 2.77% 2.77% Swing 0.02pp 0.65pp 0.12pp   Seventh party Eighth party Ninth party   Leader Emily Lau Leung Yiu-chung Johnny Mak Party Frontier NWSC Democratic Alliance Alliance Pro-democracy Pro-democracy Pro-democracy Last election 4 seats, 1.16% 2 seats, 0.41% New party Seats won 6 4 4 Seat change 1 1 2 Popular vote 25,349 14,146 8,418 Percentage 2.41% 1.35% 0.80% Swing 1.25pp 0.94pp N/A
Map of the winning party by constituency

The 2003 Hong Kong District Council elections were held on 23 November 2003 for all 18 districts of Hong Kong, 400 members from directly elected constituencies out of total 529 council members. It was the second District Council election after the handover of Hong Kong in 1997.

The election was historically significant as it was the first election came after the controversies over the legislation of the Hong Kong Basic Law Article 23 and the large-scale July 1 protests in mid-2003 against the unpopular Tung Chee-hwa administration. The election saw the devastating defeat of the pro-government pro-Beijing camp.

The pro-Beijing flagship party Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) received the largest defeat in the elections, only 62 of the 206 of its candidates were elected. The party's heavyweights, Yeung Yiu-chung, Lau Kong-wah and Ip Kwok-him all lost their seats to the pro-democracy challengers, with Ip lost his longtime base of Kwun Lung to Cyd Ho of The Frontier. Choy So-yuk also faced challenge from Leung Kwok-hung of April Fifth Action, only retained her seat with narrow margin. DAB chairman Tsang Yok-sing resigned for the party's defeat after the election, and subsequently was replaced by Ma Lik. The pro-democracy camp received overall success, with Democratic Party winning the most of 95 seats.

After the election, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa appointed 102 pro-government members to the District Councils to dilute the influence of the pro-democrats and retained control of some of the councils.