Wow!

I did not expect Mufi Hannemann to get smoked like this!

I would certainly like to understand how the Hannemann campaign crashed so badly. He had the high visibility from his two terms as mayor and earlier years on the City Council, he had the big money, and he had most of the big endorsements. And he still got soundly trounced. Even if he had gotten all of the Republican votes cast statewide, he still would have lost.

So what happened?

Turnout. Only 41.8% of registered voters actually cast primary ballots. So nearly six out of ten voters stayed away. It would appear that many of those were probably Mufi’s voters. Unfortunately, without precinct data to see if turnout was low in areas where Mufi has drawn his votes in the past, it’s difficult to draw any conclusions.

Momentum. I don’t know how you can quantify the shift towards Abercrombie in the final days of the campaign. The late flow of money was one indicator.

Rail. I would guess that the way Mufi pushed rail cost him votes, although the Panos for mayor campaign, which was the closest to a single-issue anti-rail test, pulled less than 20% of the Honolulu mayoral vote. So it’s doubtful that rail was the primary factor.

“Familiarity breeds contempt.” Honolulu residents probably know a lot more about Mufi than they do about Neil. In this case, it didn’t turn into a plus for the former mayor.

“Negative” turnoff. Hannemann’s campaign seemed to lose its way after the negative public reaction to the “compare and decide” mailer, and the awkward apologize-but-keep-distributing response. I wonder whether the campaign had other attack ads planned that were scrapped in the wake of “compare and decide”.

What happened to the “shock and awe” that the Hannemann campaign promised? There was anticipation, then nothing. What did that mean?

All comments appreciated.

And data is in scarce supply. Trying to access primary statistics at the Office of Elections web site this morning returns this message:

So it goes.

Oh, and did I mention being pleased that Gary Okino is being sent into retirement after his God-based challenge to Blake Oshiro failed?