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UPDATED 11/3/10, 8:14 a.m.

The 2010 election was historic after all.

Voters, given the opportunity to choose the state’s next governor from two popular, widely-known candidates, instead chose to stay home in numbers not seen in Hawaii in decades.

Of more than 690,000 registered voters, just 385,000 cast a ballot as of the fourth printout, which included all 242 polling places and nearly all absentee votes. It was released at a few minutes after 6 a.m. Wednesday morning.

The turnout percent of 55.7 percent is not only lower than 2008, when 66 percent of voters participated as Hawaii-born Barack Obama was elected president, but also lower than the almost every election in the last 18 years, the period available on the state’s website. The low-water mark was 52.7 percent turnout in 2006.

Statewide General Election Turnout

Source: Hawaii Office of Elections records

Those numbers measure the turnout as a function of registered voters, but there are hundreds of thousands of others who are eligible to vote but don’t even register.

For the 2010 general election, 690,748 Hawaii citizens registered to vote — that’s actually 600 less than were registered two years ago. The 2009 American Community Survey estimates that Hawaii’s resident population of 1.3 million includes about 1 million people 18 years and over — though a small number of those might not be eligible to vote due to citizenship status or criminal history.

The voting-age population has grown steadily over the last decade, as has the number of registered voters, even as turnout has stayed level and even decreased.

Turnout by Population

Source: Hawaii Office of Elections and U.S. Census Bureau records

In Honolulu, the turnout rate was noticeably higher than the neighbor islands as a whole, possibly because the 1st Congressional District race between Colleen Hanabusa and Charles Djou drew more attention, and more voters, than the 2nd Congressional District race between Mazie Hirono and John Willoughby.

County-by-county reports show that 57.2 percent of registered [pdf] voters participated, as of the third printout. By comparison, the turnouts were 57.3 percent in [pdf], 53.3 percent in [pdf] and 49.7 percent in [pdf].

In the seven previous general elections, City and County of Honolulu voters turned out at a clip nearly identical to their neighbor island counterparts, always within 3 percentage points. Prior to 2010, the largest gap came in 2004, when Mufi Hannemann edged the late Duke Bainum in the race for Honolulu mayor, 49.3 percent to 48.8 percent.

Honolulu Turnout Vs. Neighbor Islands

Source: Hawaii Office of Elections records

The percentage of voters taking advantage of early and absentee voting opportunities has climbed every year. This year, with early walk-in voting open from Oct. 19 until Saturday, more than 163,000 voters avoided waiting in lines on Election Day — though not all are represented in Tuesday night’s final printout.

They represented about 42 percent of all votes cast, eclipsing the record 38.5 percent set in the 2008 general election, though more total absentee ballots were cast in 2008 than in 2010.

Absentee Ballots as Percentage of Turnout

Source: Hawaii Office of Elections records

Check back with Civil Beat this week for a detailed analysis of how absentee and early voting affected the election.

DISCUSSION: *If you voted in Tuesday’s election, what motivated you to head to the polls? If not, why not? Join the conversation.