The government yesterday announced the audited results of Sunday’s direct Legislative Assembly (AL) election, which did not affect the composition of the 14 lawmakers-elect.
It also announced the audited results of the indirect election, which also did not affect the composition of that segment’s 12 lawmakers-elect.
According to the audited results announced yesterday, the New Hope candidacy group headed by veteran lawmaker-cum-civil service unionist José Maria Pereira Coutinho, that came out on top in Sunday’s 2025 direct election, garnered 26.73 percent of the total number of valid votes, enabling three of its candidates to be elected. Only six candidacy groups were vying for the 14 directly-elected seats at stake in Sunday’s election.
The audited results were announced by the General Audit Committee of the Legislative Assembly Election in a press briefing at the Public Administration Building on Rua do Campo yesterday.
Cheong Kuok Chi, who heads the committee, announced that 24 votes initially deemed invalid were finally declared valid.
In Sunday’s direct election, the voter turnout was 53.35 percent, where 175,272 voters cast their ballots out of the 328,506 registered voters eligible to cast their ballots.
According to the direct election’s preliminary results released in the early hours of Monday, a total of 5,987 votes were blank, while 7,077 votes were deemed invalid at that time.
According to the audited results announced by Cheong yesterday, the 175,272 votes cast in Sunday’s direct election comprised 162,232 valid votes, 5,987 blank ballots and 7,053 invalid votes, after the committee validated 24 ballots initially deemed invalid.
The audited results of Sunday’s direct election were also uploaded onto the legislative election’s website yesterday.
According to the audited results announced yesterday, the percentages of votes garnered by the six candidacy groups in relation to the total number of valid votes remain the same as the preliminarily-announced ones.
By order of the number of votes garnered, according to the audited results announced yesterday, the New Hope group garnered 43,367 votes, while the Macau United Citizens Association (ACUM) group won 29,464 votes, the Union for Development (UPD) group obtained 27,435 votes, the Progress Promotion Union (UPP) group won 21,750 votes, the Macau-Guangdong Union (UMG) group garnered 21,464 votes, and the Alliance for a Happy Home group obtained 18,752 votes.
According to analysts, the New Hope is the electoral vehicle of the Macau Civil Servants Association (ATFPM), while the ACUM group involves many members of Macau’s sizeable Fujianese community, estimated to account for about 1/5 of the local population, UPD group is the electoral vehicle of the Macau Federation of Trade Unions (Gung Luen), the UPP group is the electoral vehicle of the Macau General Union of Neighbourhood Associations (Kai Fong), the UMG is the electoral vehicle of the Macau Jiangmen Communal Society (Jiangmen, a city in Guangdong Province, is the ancestral hometown of thousands of Macau residents), while the Alliance for a Happy Home is the electoral vehicle of the Macau Women’s General Association (Fu Luen).
Consequently, the New Hope group garnered 26.73 percent of the total number of valid votes, while the ACUM group obtained 18.16 percent, the UPD group 16.91 percent, the UPP group 13.41 percent, the UMG group 13.23 percent, and the Alliance for a Happy Home group 11.56 percent.
In Sunday’s direct election, the New Hope group and the ACUM group won three seats each, while the other four candidacy won two seats each.
All the six candidacy groups competed in previous elections.
It is the first time that the New Hope group has won three seats since it was first elected in the direct election in 2005, while the ACUM group won three seats in the 2013 direct election and the 2021 direct election, as well as this time, since it first ran in the legislature’s direct election in 2005.
Before Sunday’s 2025 direct election, the ACUM group was the only electoral group that had won three seats since the Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR) held its first direct legislative election in 2001.
In the 2021 direct election, 14 candidacy groups vied for the 14 seats at stake when candidates of seven groups were elected, comprising the same six groups this time as well as the Power of Synergy group. This time, all candidates fielded by the Power of Synergy group headed by sitting lawmaker Ron Lam U Tou were disqualified from running in the election after the MSAR’s Committee for Safeguarding National Security concluded that they had not upheld the MSAR Basic Law or been disloyal to the MSAR.
In the direct election four years ago, the ACUM group garnered the highest number of votes, at 26,599, accounting for 20.14 percent of the total number of valid votes, enabling the group to win three seats. It was the only group to win three seats at that time.
Four years ago, the UPD group obtained the second highest number of votes, at 23,761, accounting for 17.99 percent of the total, while the New Hope group garnered the third highest number of votes, at 18,232, accounting for 13.80 percent of the total. Both groups then won two seats each.
In the 2021 direct election, the UPP group obtained 15,102 votes, accounting for 11.43 percent of the total, while the Alliance for a Happy Home group garnered 14,232 votes, accounting for 10.78 percent of the total. Both groups won two seats each.
Four years ago, the Power of Synergy group won one seat as it obtained 8,764 votes, accounting for 6.64 percent of the total.
Although the voter turnout in Sunday’s 2025 direct election (53.35 percent) was not the highest since the MSAR held its first direct legislative election, the number of voters (175,272) casting their ballots was the highest.
Since the MSAR held its first direct legislative election, the highest voter turnout was 59.91 percent in 2009, when 149,006 voters cast their ballots out of the then 248,708 eligible registered voters.
A civil servant pastes the audited results of Sunday’s direct and indirect legislative elections on ground floor of the Public Administration Building on Rua do Campo yesterday afternoon. – Photo: GCS
