Hawaii’s presidential record begins in 1960, the first election after statehood, and it begins almost even: John F. Kennedy carried the new state by 115 votes out of 184,705, a margin of one-tenth of a point. It has voted Democratic in every election since but two — Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1984 — and by 2008 it gave Barack Obama, born in Honolulu, the largest margin of any state, 45.2 points. The line settled into wide Democratic majorities and has held there, the surest Pacific ground for the party.
In 2024 that ground moved. Hawaii’s Democratic margin fell from 29.5 points in 2020 to 23.1, a 6.4-point shift toward Donald Trump that matched the national move almost exactly. It carried across all four counties at once. Maui slipped most, from 35.4 points Democratic in 2020 to 25.9 in 2024; Honolulu, which holds two-thirds of the state’s vote, moved from 26.9 to 21.7 and supplied the largest single block of the change. No county came close to flipping — the nearest, Kauai, still ran 19.5 points Democratic — but all four moved the same direction together.
The state is unlike any other in its mix. Asian residents are the plurality at 36.4 percent — Filipino 14.3, Japanese 11.7 — and no group is a majority: 21 percent report two or more races and 20.9 percent are White, the highest multiracial share in the country, with another 6.1 percent Native Hawaiian. It is affluent and secular: median household income is $100,389 against a national $80,734, fourth-highest of the fifty states, and 59.7 percent claim no religion, where Buddhists (3.8 percent) outnumber many Protestant traditions. In 2026 Governor Josh Green, a Democrat, seeks a second term; neither U.S. Senate seat is on the ballot.
Akashic