Abstract
Combining the social cleavages theory from political sociology and the democratization theories from comparative politics, this study argues the structure of regime and regime type would affect the voting behavior of general voters. In competitive authoritarian regimes, the autocrats would face the co-optation problems, as a result, they would target a group of voters to co-opt, and interact with their responses. Since low-income groups or working class cannot change the rules, influence the policy decisions or get any interests if they vote for the opposite parties, they would turn to support the autocrats. This process would ultimately benefit the autocrats. This paper uses Hong Kong District Councils Elections as a case to examine the above argument. Using Hong Kong Population Census data and District Council Elections results with regression to analyze the voting behavior and the changing trend, statistical results show that the low-income households turn their support to the pro-establishment camp from 2007 to 2015 significantly. Supporters of the pan-democracy camp are mostly coming from middle-income households and voters who have a higher education level. In addition, new migrants using Putonghua as their daily language tend to vote for the pro-establishment camp stably. Patron-client system is the main mechanism to allow whether pro-establishment camp or pan-democracy camp to gain support from the low-income groups or from working class. Simultaneously, public housing areas become the important place for the pro-establishment camp to develop patrons-client networks, and the pan-democracy camp is losing support in public housing areas.