[2] On 22 June 2015, few days after the legislative vote on the 2015 Hong Kong electoral reform over the electoral method of the 2017 Chief Executive election, moderate democrat Ronny Tong Ka-wah, who had campaigned for his mid-way reform proposal, announced that he would quit the Civic party that he co-founded and would also resign from the Legislative Council as he said it was inappropriate for him to retain his seat in the legislature because he stood for election as a Civic Party member which was effective on 1 October 2015.

Holden Chow Ho-ding, vice chairman of the largest Beijing-loyalist party Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) who submitted his nomination form on 5 January 2016, represents the pro-Beijing camp in the by-election.

[5] Christine Fong Kwok-shan, former member of the Liberal Party, independent Sai Kung District Councillor who aimed to provide a choice between pro-democracy and pro-Beijing camp, submitted her nomination form on 7 January 2016.

Edward Leung Tin-kei was involved in the Mong Kok civil unrest broke out on 8 January in which the Hong Kong Indigenous called for actions online to defend the unlicensed street hawkers from being cracked down by Food and Environmental Hygiene Department inspectors and escalated into violent clashes between the police and the protesters.

[10] Political scientist Ivan Choy Chi-keung believed that the unrest would attract conservative voters come out to vote for the pro-Beijing candidate Holden Chow Ho-ding of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong and further consolidate the radical localist base of Leung, which would place the pan-democracy Civic Party's Alvin Yeung Ngok-kiu at a disadvantage.