Mazie Hirono (D)
Ward Research for Hawaii News Now/
Honolulu Star-Advertiser (see also
here). 1/26-2/5. Registered voters. MoE ±3.5%; for Democratic primary, MoE ±4%. (
5/4-10 results):
Mazie Hirono (D): 57 (57)
Linda Lingle (R): 37 (35)
Undecided: 5 (8)
Ed Case (D): 56 (54)
Linda Lingle (R): 36 (36)
Undecided: 8 (10)
Mazie Hirono (D): 56 (25)
Ed Case (D): 36 (26)
Undecided: 8 (11)
We've gotten results all over the map in Hawaii's open seat Senate race, where, depending on which pollster you want to believe, Rep. Mazie Hirono has an easy path to becoming the next senator, or she'll have a fierce battle against Republican ex-Gov. Linda Lingle in November if she can even get by ex-Rep. Ed Case in the primary. Here's a sampling of the smorgasbord of results:
Merriman River Group for Civil Beat (Jan.): Hirono d. Lingle 46-39, Case d. Lingle 46-33, Case d. Hirono 41-39
Benenson for Hirono campaign (Nov.): Hirono d. Case 54-36
PPP (Oct.): Hirono d. Lingle 48-42, Lingle d. Case 45-43, Hirono d. Case 45-40
Merriman River Group for Case campaign (Aug.): Lingle d. Hirono 48-43, Case d. Lingle 48-38, Case d. Hirono 53-37
PPP for Daily Kos/SEIU (Mar.): Hirono d. Lingle 52-40, Case d. Lingle 52-35
Today's poll from Ward Research (on behalf of the state's paper of record, the
Star-Advertiser) falls into the camp of smooth-sailing for Hirono, with 20 point leads for her over both Case and Lingle. (They also find Case easily beating Lingle, if he survives the primary; the November results mirror their previous poll from last May.) I'll leave it to you to decide which pollster you want to put the most stock in, but one thing to bear in mind is that Ward Research is the only Hawaii-based pollster here, which may give them a familiarity advantage in polling this notoriously-hard-to-poll state (mostly given cultural differences in how polls get responded to, in the state's Asian-plurality population).
The primary portion of today's poll doesn't yield the best trendlines, since the previous poll was back in May, before anybody had announced for the race, and they just ran a "kitchen sink" primary of every prominent Democrat thought to be looking for a promotion. With a streamlined field, it looks most of the Colleen Hanabusa, Brian Schatz and Mufi Hannemann votes from that poll went to Hirono this time.