The Honolulu Star-Advertise published two surprising findings from its own polling. Their newly published data, based on a telephone survey to land lines and cell phones of a sample of registered voters statewide, found that Gov. David Ige is trailing his most prominent challenger, Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa, by 20%. That’s not the end of the story, since the campaign has not started in earnest, but it’s a surprising showing by Hanabusa.
And in the second surprising result, the survey data show that support for the controversial Thirty Meter Telescope is at a high, with three-quarters of voters saying they now support construction of the telescope on Mauna Kea. The support among Native Hawaiians was over 70%, although Hawaiian support lagged slightly behind other ethnic groups.
Opponents of the telescope say they have not seen this kind of support among Hawaiians. This seems to suggest TMT opponents may be less likely to be resisted to vote than the general population.
Of course, it will now be interesting to see if other polling efforts find comparable results. The company that did the Star-Advertiser poll, Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, does a lot of work for newspapers and other media across the country.
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I remember seeing several days of full page ads from Hanabusa 4 or 5 weeks ago.. I think she’s been out of the gate faster then Ige and the poll is showing the results of that early start perhaps. It’s laughable that Hee says he “encouraged” by his 11%. You just can’t make this stuff up. He was supposed to help Ige pull votes from Hanabusa and both together are still behind her by nearly 10% I think.
Ige was trailing Abercrombie by 20 points at about the same time in 2014. The big difference being he is not an unknown now.
Good point…….you are right Mike. It’s a big difference now that we know him. Thus, I think the poll is probably accurate.
Since Abercrombie was the incumbent when Ige gained 20 points on election day, one could also conclude amusingly that Hanabusa will also gain another 20 points by election day to beat Ige who is now the incumbent, by 40 points on election day – Hanabusa 60% to Ige 20%?