Hong Kong Legislative Council Election Post-Mortem Analysis

For the Hong Kong Legislative Council election of 2008, there had been a series of public opinion polls conducted by the Hong Kong University Public Opinion Programme, the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Lingnan University Public Governance Programme and the Hong Kong Research Association in the weeks leading up the vote itself.  On election data, a number of organizations conducted exit polls.  The question here is whether the public opinion polls and exit polls predictive of the actual vote.

In Hong Kong, this is not just a simple research question or some esoteric academic debate over survey methodology and executive.  Instead, this is a politically controversial subject.  Are the public opinion polls (or, at least, the selective release of certain parts of the data) serving some special political agenda (such as persuading a certain candidate to withdraw from an apparently hopeless situation)?  Are the exit polls used to guide strategic voting blocs on election day?

Here is the table of the actual voting data along with the four pre-election public opinion poll average and the Hong Kong Research Association exit poll results.