It is a 3 way race with the GOP candidate tied at 32% with a Democrat white guy and an ethnic Asian RAT lady not far behind at 27%. There is no run-off and the one with the plurality wins. Bush came close in this district with 47% in 2004.
It would seem to me that Djou should be a shoo-in if he can even come close to Bush's 2004 performance. The RATs and their race hustlers should split their votes between a white guy and an ethnic Asian woman easily.
I'm guessing in the racial pecking order of Hawaii politics, Djou is ethnic Chinese, which is only slightly lower on the totem pole than ethnic Japanese, right? So I guess the question is why is a white guy ahead of an ethnic Japanese lady among the RATs and why isn't Djou pulling ahead in a three-way race?
I don’t know the exact voter registration breakdown, but Cook rates the district as D+11, so it must lean heavily D. This district includes the city of Honolulu. Even if Djou wins the Special, he will have a tough battle in November to retain the seat for the 112th Congress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_Partisan_Voting_Index
I don’t know why Djou isn’t polling better. I’d figure he should be around 40%.
It’s amusing that Case who held and is from district 2 is running in district 1 against Hanbusa who is from district 1 and ran for district 2 in 2006.