Third Side chairman Tik Chi-yuen claims that voters abandoned the centrist line and voted for a pro-Beijing camp because of the 'Returning to the Edge Effect' (歸邊效應) in the election.
[5] In the 2016 Hong Kong legislative election; Wong Singh-chi bolted from the Third Side and ran for the Social Welfare functional constitution, Tik Chi-yuen ran for the Kowloon West, Christine Fong was eliminated from 10th place with 34,544 votes in the eastern district of New Territories,[6] the Path of Democracy sent two lists to Hong Kong Island and the eastern part of the New Territories and losing with 10,028 and 8,084 votes (respectively, which was a very small number of votes, resulting in the confiscation of the election deposit).
In January 2018, the pro-democracy camp decided to hold a primary election to select candidates for the March 2018 Hong Kong by-elections, and Frederick Fung, who was still a member of Hong Kong Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood (ADPL) at that time, became a preliminary candidate ("Plan B"), but the pro-democracy camp persuaded Frederick Fung to give up his position as "Plan B".
In July 2018, Frederick Fung withdrew from ADPL, and in September, he expressed his intention to run in the by-election to show his opposition to the pro-democracy camp's preordaining of Lee Cheuk-yan to serve as preliminary candidate ("Plan B").
After Frederick Fung's break with the pro-democracy camp, ADPL immediately expressed its stance in support of Lee Cheuk-yan.
In the end, both Lee Cheuk-yan and Frederick Fung lost the by-election because their combined votes were less than that of Chan Hoi-yan, the representative of the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong.