Fact Check Report Card: Winning Candidates Spoke Most Truthfully
Voters in Hawaii like political candidates who tell the truth.
That’s one takeaway from an analysis of the results of the three key election races this year and of our election Fact Checks.
Of course we know that not every voter viewed our Fact Checks before casting a ballot in the governor, mayoral and 1st Congressional District races.
But regardless of whether they saw our Fact Checks, they responded to candidates who tended to be more truthful in their statements. The winners 鈥 Neil Abercrombie, Colleen Hanabusa and Peter Carlisle 鈥 all scored better than their opponents on Civil Beat’s Fact Checks.
Governor
Neil Abercrombie, who trounced his Republican opponent, James “Duke” Aiona, in the governor’s race, was one and a half times more likely to earn a rating of True or Mostly True than ratings of False or Barely True, while Aiona was 1.2 times as likely to earn the same ratings.
Aiona made more statements judged False, 5 vs. 3, while Abercrombie had the most Half True grades, earning the title on five of his 15 Fact Checks. If we scored the candidates just on True or False grades, Abercrombie was twice as likely as Aiona to win a True grade.
The Fact Checks were as bad news as the election for Democratic primary candidate Mufi Hannemann. We found him twice as likely to earn a False grade as a True grade.
1st Congressional District
In the 1st Congressional District race, Colleen Hanabusa was three times as likely to earn a True or Mostly True grade than a False or Barely True grade. Charles Djou was equally as likely to earn a True or Mostly True grade as a False or Barely True grade.
Honolulu Mayor
In the mayoral race, the two leading opponents of the eventual winner, Peter Carlisle, scored poorly. Carlisle scored best, although he trailed the winners in the other races. Carlisle was equally likely to earn a True or Mostly True grade than a False or Barely True grade, while his opponents 鈥 Kirk Caldwell and Panos Prevedouros 鈥 were much more likely to earn False or Barely True grades.
We hope you take some encouragement from our small study. (Of course we know that our decision about which statements to Fact Check could have influenced the outcome of this 鈥渞eport card.鈥) It seems to suggest that people who tell the truth can win elections in Hawaii, a comforting thought given what many decried as the dirty nature of many election campaigns on the mainland.
Perhaps candidates for office in future elections will also take a lesson away from our Fact Check Report Card. Speaking the truth is not only better for democracy, it also improves a candidate’s chance of success.
The end result: Democracy wins.
