Since his first run for president in 2016, support for President-elect Donald Trump has steadily increased among Hawaii voters, just like it did this year in other politically deep-blue states from California to New York.
Just like in California and New York, Trump has never won in Hawaii but has seen his popularity among isle voters consistently rise.
In his 2016 race against Hillary Clinton, Trump drew 29.4% of Hawaii’s voter turnout of 437,664. He went on to win his first term in the White House despite losing in states including Hawaii.
In 2020, Trump unsuccessfully ran against President Joe Biden while his support in Hawaii increased to 34% of all 579,784 votes cast.
And this year, Trump received 37.1% of 521,032 island votes.
Republican presidential candidates may never win the popular vote in Hawaii, at least not with the current electorate, but the three most recent presidential elections clearly show growing support for Trump, who has transformed the Republican Party in his own image.
Nationally, “he ran the table” across nearly every voter demographic and so-called battleground states, according to Hawaii political analyst Neal Milner. He called Trump’s popularity among some local voters “consistent with national trends.”
“Trump’s still a minority in any big city from Honolulu up,” Milner said. “But he also did better in New York City. … The overall message was he did better here. He did better everywhere.”
This year’s elections also saw Hawaii Republican gains at the state Legislature, adding three incoming representatives to the 51-member House, for a total of nine, and one more to the 25-member Senate, for a total of three.
Most of the House and Senate Republicans represent districts in West Oahu, along with two of the nine members of the Honolulu City Council.
Political trends
Growing Republican support underscores the reality that Hawaii — which is dominated by Democratic elected officials and Democratic voters — continues to trend politically moderate, especially compared to more progressive cities like San Francisco, Chicago and New York City.
Hawaii Democrats elected to both the House and Senate are generally moderate and reluctant to embrace socially radical ideas, Milner said.
“This place is not a bastion of liberalism,” he said. “It’s a bastion of the Democratic Party. There is a difference.”
Hawaii’s modern Democratic Party traces its roots to the unionization of immigrant plantation workers that resulted in better pay and benefits and increased job security, leading to the creation of the middle class.
Progress in the early days, like labor movements across the country, did not come easily. Strikes and other union actions sometimes turned violent and bloody, especially during Hawaii’s era as a U.S. territory dominated by Republican governors, a Republican-dominated Territorial Legislature and a plantation economy controlled by Republican business interests.
Then, following World War II, Hawaii veterans — many of them Japanese American soldiers, including the late U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye — returned from war in Europe and helped lay the foundation for Hawaii’s Democratic Party.
They were led by John A. Burns, who would later become governor in 1962, along with his running mate, Lt. Gov. Tom Gill.
Just a few years earlier, in 1959, Hawaii became America’s 50th state, and a new tourism-based economy led to even more union jobs for generations of Hawaii families that continue today.
Even in a state dominated by Democrats and unions, socially conservative values remained.
In 1998, 69% of island residents opposed same-sex marriage, and voters gave the Legislature the power to restrict marriage only to couples of opposite genders.
By 2023, attitudes about same-sex marriage overwhelmingly flipped, both locally and across the country.
But the Legislature’s ability to overturn what’s now known as marriage equality remained on the books until last week, when voters across the isles passed a state constitutional amendment removing it.
And in 2023, Gov. Josh Green signed a bill that ensured the right to abortions in Hawaii, along with protections for health care workers who perform them, including for women from states where abortions are now banned.
The Legislature sent the bill to Green after the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson allowed states to ban — or severely limit — abortions.
But other traditionally progressive ideas such as legalized adult recreational marijuana use have gotten nowhere in Hawaii, despite bills being introduced every year in the Legislature.
“The thing about Hawaii is it’s a Democratic state, but not necessarily progressive,” said Colin Moore, who teaches public policy at the University of Hawaii and serves as associate professor at the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization.
It’s reflected by a state Legislature, Moore said, “that’s cautious and very traditional.”
High costs move voters
Trump’s transformation of the Republican Party has inspired support across Hawaii, especially in West Oahu voting districts that were once home to plantations and their immigrant laborers.
By early Wednesday morning, hundreds of West Oahu Republican voters had stood in line for hours to vote for Trump and local GOP candidates.
Like other Republicans — and an untold number of Hawaii Democrats who also may have voted for Trump — they’re frustrated with Hawaii’s high cost of living that’s driving an exodus of young people, families and kupuna, said Tamara McKay, chair of the Republican Party of Hawaii.
“I don’t think it’s just support for Trump,” she said. “Everyone is tired, overall, with the economy when it just hits them in the pocket with high prices.”
Republican Party leaders are turning greater attention to the Democratic-controlled Legislature and training Republican voters to identify and track bills, along with making their voices heard by testifying in person or submitting written testimony to exert their influence, McKay said.
“It’s eye-opening for people to see what’s going on at the Legislature,” she said. “They’re not taking care of the people.”
No matter what happens next to Hawaii’s Democratic and Republican parties, it’s clear that Trumpism has taken hold in Hawaii, Moore said.
“Hawaii’s obviously a blue state,” Moore said. “But there’s a lot of Trump supporters. One of the less-reported stories is that Trump increased his support in blue states. And Hawaii’s no exception.”