That’s the question for Hawaii readers this week now that the Honolulu Star-Advertiser is charging $19.95 for “all access.”

Two years ago, Pierre Omidyar and I asked ourselves whether online advertising could support and sustain an investigative news organization. We concluded that the answer was “no” — and that is why we launched Civil Beat with subscriptions from Day 1.

We fully support a subscription-based model for news.

Civil Beat is focused on original public affairs journalism, and it’s going to stay that way. We hope the past 15 months have demonstrated our commitment to thoughtful reporting, truth and transparency. Our mission is to ask — and get answers to — the tough questions. We can do that better because we are here to serve only you, our readers.

There is no advertising on Civil Beat. And we like it that way. On our website and (which we just launched!), you won’t find any annoying ads. Just news. Better yet, we don’t worry about upsetting advertisers — because we don’t have any.

We just added four new sections to the site: business, sports, entertainment and breaking news, including national and international stories. You told us that these sections were important to you, and we think we’ve found a way to connect you with these areas of interest while still maintaining our Civil Beat quality.

Finally, we’ve introduced a new subscription offer, $9.99 a month — 50 percent off our normal price.

We hope that you’ll take advantage of this offer and experience what Civil Beat is all about: quality, complete coverage and a fresh approach to journalism and Hawaii.

To compare the two services and learn more about Civil Beat, go to the “Why Civil Beat?” page.

We believe that change begins with a question, so we humbly ask you this: Which will you choose?

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Civil Beat launched last May and today is Hawaii’s largest organization exclusively dedicated to public affairs reporting. We will be adding a software engineer, an editor and an operations director to help support our growth. We are also looking for reporter-hosts for future opportunities.

We are looking for a technical star with a passion for journalism to join our technology team, led by Publisher and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. If you like building new, innovative technologies, especially ones that elevate the quality of journalism, Civil Beat is the place for you.

We’re looking for a second assistant editor with a deep understanding of Hawaii to help expand our coverage. We’ve been broadening the diversity of content on our news service and publishing perspectives from more members of our community. This editor will lead this initiative.

As more and more people are using the site, demands are increasing on the business operations side. We are looking for a hands-on operations director to oversee the day-to-day business, support new initiatives and make sure our customers are happy.

We’re also looking for reporters interested in becoming members of our investigative news team. Candidates should have a passion for civic affairs journalism.

If you’re interested, please send a resume (PDF format, please) to resumes@civilbeat.com.

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After the primary election in September, we crunched the numbers and told you, for example, that there was a strong mathematical relationship between gubernatorial candidate James “Duke” Aiona and mayoral hopeful Panos Prevedouros.

This time around, we can tell you that supporters of Neil Abercrombie tended to support the constitutional amendment allowing the state to keep excess tax revenue instead of returning it to you. Read to the end for a countdown of the five most interesting correlations we found.

First, let’s review the rules. Here’s what we wrote six weeks ago:

What is a correlation coefficient, you ask? The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient is a measure of the linear dependence between two variables and can be determined by using this formula:

Source: Screen capture of

Don’t worry, it’s all Greek to us, too. Luckily, Microsoft Excel has a handy PEARSON function that lets us quickly input two arrays of data — for example, the district-by-district results for a gubernatorial candidate and a mayoral candidate.

The formula’s output is a number somewhere between 1.0 (for perfect correlation, when the data go up and down in tandem) and negative 1.0 (for when they mirror each other perfectly, with one going up when the other goes down). A result of zero means the two sets of data are mathematically independent of each other.

To be clear, the above table only means that where Hannemann performed relatively well, Caldwell was somewhat likely to do the same. Just because the coefficient representing their relationship was .770 does not mean that Caldwell got 77 percent of the votes that Hannemann did, and doesn’t mean the likelihood of Caldwell winning a district was 77 percent if Hannemann won it.

It’s impossible to draw a straight line between candidates in different races. The correlation coefficient is not about causality, and to attribute a causal relationship between two candidates from this data would be a bridge too far.

It’s up to us humans to interpret the data and figure out why things went the way they did. The relationships we’re describing are in no way personal but entirely mathematical, like love between two robots.

Civil Beat used the formula to investigate the relationships between the relative successes and failures of candidates in different races across Hawaii’s 51 House districts. As you saw above, some of the findings pretty much support conventional thinking, and some are counterintuitive.

For the general election, we threw the following district-by-district percentages into the blender to make our cocktail: voter turnout; Abercrombie; Aiona; Djou; Colleen Hanabusa; Daniel K. Inouye; Mazie Hirono; Appointed Board of Education amendment; independent Honolulu transit authority amendment; tax rebate amendment; and per capita income. Below you’ll find tables describing the relationships between those ingredients.

All tables are sorted from strongest relationship to weakest, regardless of whether the relationship was positive or negative.

Takeaway 5: Voting Down Party Lines

This table holds the fewest surprises. There were positive relationships between members of the same party and negative relationships between members of opposite parties. It’s interesting to note that both gubernatorial candidates had their weakest relationship with Sen. Inouye. He performed strongly with voters of all stripes, making him a less polarizing figure even as he’s the “godfather” of Democratic politics in Hawaii.

Source: Civil Beat analysis

Takeaway 4: Rich People Vote

We see here that there’s a strong positive relationship between income and turnout, which we reported on yesterday. It’s also apparent that regions with lower turnout tended to move toward Republican Aiona but away from Republican Djou, if only slightly. Democrats Hirono and Inouye performed stronger when turnout was high.

Source: Civil Beat analysis

Takeaway 3: Wealthy Backed Djou, Appointed BOE

Wealthy districts backed GOP candidates in Hawaii this year, even as Democrats dominated the election. Hirono, Hanabusa, Inouye and Abercrombie all had negative relationships with per capita income, while Republicans Djou and Aiona had positive relationships.

Also of note is the relationship between high income and support for an appointed Board of Education.

Source: Civil Beat analysis

Takeaway 2: No Correlation on Tax Rebate

One number in the above table that we struggled to explain is the lack of a connection between income and the tax-related constitutional amendment. If wealthier residents are more fiscally conservative and wanted the government to return the revenue, you’d see a negative figure there. If less affluent voters need the money more urgently, you’d also see a negative number.

Maybe those theories are both off, or maybe the ballot question was just confusing and people didn’t know what they were voting for, but the figure turned out to be 0.022, pretty darn close to zero.

Takeaway 1: Abercrombie Says ‘Yes,’ Supporters Say ‘No’

It’s hardly shocking that Republicans backing Aiona’s candidacy would tend to oppose any change that would allow the government to hang onto tax dollars any longer than previously permitted.

The interesting takeaway here, though, is that areas supportive of Abercrombie tended to oppose the appointed Board of Education amendment, even though he changed his mind during the campaign and cast a vote in support. That’s likely due to the fact that the Hawaii State Teachers Association endorsed Abercrombie and simultaneously ran a campaign opposing the amendment.

Meanwhile, Republican-friendlier areas supporting Aiona voted to give more power to the government. Not particularly conservative, right?

Source: Civil Beat analysis

Now that we’ve all had our fill of these correlation smoothies, it’s time to put the blender away for two years — unless you can find some more numbers for us to crunch.

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For the second time in two elections, state House District 18 — encompassing Aina Haina, Niu Valley and Kahala — led the state in voter turnout. It also had the highest per capita income in the 2000 Census.

In all, about 56 percent of registered Hawaii voters participated in the 2010 general election. Aina Haina, Hawaii Kai and Diamond Head led the way with 66 to 67 percent turnout. The top 13 districts for turnout were all in the City and County of Honolulu. Tourist-heavy West and South Maui were at the bottom, around 40 percent.

The following table is sorted from highest turnout to lowest. The “rank” column compares the per capita income between districts.

Voter Turnout by Hawaii House District

Source: Civil Beat analysis of election results and U.S. Census Bureau data

Hawaii House district numbers can be seen on this map. They are the black numbers not inside a box. The numbers inside boxes are Senate districts. The pink numbers are U.S. congressional districts.

Source: Hawaii Office of Elections

DISCUSSION: *Did you turn out on election day? Join the conversation.

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Civil Beat’s geographical analysis of the 1st Congressional District election results shows where Hanabusa made her gains as she turned a 19-7 Republican advantage into a 20-6 edge of her own in Hawaii House districts won.

The following chart is sorted from highest Hanabusa percentage to lowest.

District-by-District Results in the Congress Election

Source: Civil Beat analysis of election results

Two days after the special election in May, the Honolulu Advertiser published a story showing that Djou’s of East Honolulu, his hometown and a historic Republican enclave.

Since then, the tables have turned. Hanabusa made gains on Djou in every single state House district — all but five of which were in double digits. The most dramatic gains were made in areas formerly part of Case country.

Case won just one state House district — Manoa’s No. 24, with 38.4 percent of the vote. Hanabusa turned a 32.7 to 28.9 deficit against Djou in Manoa in May into a 59.8 to 40.2 win there in November. Next door, in District 25, Case took 33.7 percent of the vote. Hanabusa turned an eight-point loss into a 13-point win.

Civil Beat looked at the areas where Case performed well — the places where the highest proportion of voters was up for grabs Tuesday. We looked at the difference between Djou’s margin over Hanabusa in May and at Hanabusa’s margin of victory Tuesday in each of those districts.

The following chart is sorted from highest Case percentage to lowest. It shows that areas where Case did well provided Hanabusa with large gains against Djou between May and November, as was indicated by the first Civil Beat general election poll conducted on Oct. 11. The “rank” column compares the size of the gains from district to district.

District-by-District: What Happened to the Case Vote

Source: Civil Beat analysis of election results

House District numbers can be seen on this map. They are the black numbers not inside a box. The numbers inside boxes are Senate districts. The pink numbers are U.S. congressional districts.

Source: Hawaii Office of Elections

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Civil Beat’s geographical analysis of the election results — 242 precinct reports and 109 separate sets of absentee ballot data — shows that Abercrombie’s 17-point win wasn’t limited to a particular region, though there were areas of relative strength and weakness.

In addition to Aiona’s 52.3 to 47.1 percent win in the 40th District — Royal Kunia, Makakilo, Kalaeloa and his home in Kapolei — the lieutenant governor came close in two other districts and could end up ahead when final vote results are certified. Abercrombie won District 43 (Ewa Beach) and District 46 (North Shore) by just three votes apiece. More than 14,000 votes were cast for governor candidates in those two districts combined.

In general, the neighbor islands were friendlier to Abercrombie than Oahu was — counterintuitive both because the reverse was true in his primary fight against former Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann and because Abercrombie represented Honolulu for 20 years in Congress.

Abercrombie earned 61.4 percent of votes in [pdf], 60.3 percent in [pdf], 58.9 percent in [pdf] and 56.6 percent in the [pdf]. Six of the seven most successful districts for Abercrombie are on neighbor islands. The following chart is sorted from highest Abercrombie percentage to lowest.

District-by-District Results in the Governor Election

Source: Civil Beat analysis of election results

Hawaii House district numbers can be seen on this map. They are the black numbers not inside a box. The numbers inside boxes are Senate districts. The pink numbers are U.S. congressional districts.

Source: Hawaii Office of Elections

The data analysis also showed that Abercrombie performed almost exactly the same in absentee voting (58.8 percent) as in election day precinct voting (58 percent).

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Party Legend:

D = Democrat
R = Republican
L = Libertarian
F = Free Energy
G = Green
N = Nonpartisan

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On Saturday night, my colleague Nanea Kalani looked at voters’ rejection of Honolulu Hale’s leaders, and said the fates of former Mayor Mufi Hannemann were tied to those of Acting Mayor Kirk Caldwell.

On Sunday, Aloha Vote pollsters told Civil Beat editor John Temple that polling data suggests Hannemann’s negative campaign tactics hurt both candidates.

Do the final — as of this moment, anyway — election results back up those theories? It’s hard to say for sure, as the contents of each ballot are confidential. But at least one metric — a statistical model called a correlation coefficient — supports the Hannemann-Caldwell connection and reveals other interesting relationships as well.

Let’s cut to the chase first, and then we’ll explain what the numbers mean.

Here are the relationships between the three leading gubernatorial candidates and three leading mayoral candidates, sorted from strongest relationship to weakest — regardless of whether it’s a positive or negative one:

Source: Civil Beat analysis

The numbers tell us that while the positive relationship between support for Hannemann and Caldwell was a strong one, it was slightly less strong than the negative relationship between rail proponent Hannemann and the rabid anti-rail Panos Prevedouros. Conversely, Republican gubernatorial nominee James “Duke” Aiona and Prevedouros shared support, while Aiona and Caldwell had a negative mathematical relationship.

Another fun note: There was almost zero mathematical relationship between the areas where the winning gubernatorial candidate, Neil Abercrombie, was successful and where the winning mayoral candidate, Peter Carlisle, was successful. Instead, support for the left-leaning Abercrombie had a strong positive relationship with support for the conservative Prevedouros, meaning the latter tended to do relatively well where the former did.

What is a correlation coefficient, you ask? The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient is a measure of the linear dependence between two variables and can be determined by using this formula:

Source: Screen capture of

Don’t worry, it’s all Greek to us, too. Luckily, Microsoft Excel has a handy PEARSON function that lets us quickly input two arrays of data — for example, the district-by-district results for a gubernatorial candidate and a mayoral candidate.

The formula’s output is a number somewhere between 1.0 (for perfect correlation, when the data go up and down in tandem) and negative 1.0 (for when they mirror each other perfectly, with one going up when the other goes down). A result of zero means the two sets of data are mathematically independent of each other.

To be clear, the above table only means that where Hannemann performed relatively well, Caldwell was somewhat likely to do the same. Just because the coefficient representing their relationship was .770 does not mean that Caldwell got 77 percent of the votes that Hannemann did, and doesn’t mean the likelihood of Caldwell winning a district was 77 percent if Hannemann won it.

It’s impossible to draw a straight line between candidates in different races. The correlation coefficient is not about causality, and to attribute a causal relationship between two candidates from this data would be a bridge too far.

It’s up to us humans to interpret the data and figure out why things went the way they did. The relationships we’re describing are in no way personal but entirely mathematical, like love between two robots.

Civil Beat used the formula to investigate the relationships between the relative successes and failures of candidates in different races across Hawaii’s 51 House districts. Like you saw above, some of the findings pretty much support conventional thinking, and some are counterintuitive.

Here are the relationships between the leading candidates for governor and lieutenant governor based on their percent take of the ballot in each of their respective parties in all 51 House districts statewide. They’re sorted from strongest relationship to weakest.

Source: Civil Beat analysis

You’ll notice that the Abercrombie and Hannemann coefficients for each LG candidate are essentially mirror images of one another. That’s because every vote for Abercrombie was one taken away from Hannemann, and vice versa, in the Democratic Party primary. The general election tickets of Abercrombie-Brian Schatz and Aiona-Lynn Finnegan scored nearly evenly by this metric.

Here are the relationships between the leading mayoral candidates and prosecutor candidates based on their percent take of votes cast in Oahu’s 35 House districts. They’re sorted from strongest relationship to weakest.

Source: Civil Beat analysis

Not surprisingly, vote percentages for Carlisle and Franklin “Don” Pacarro, Jr. — who worked together in the prosecutor’s office for years before Carlisle resigned to run for mayor — had a positive relationship. But it’s somewhat surprising that Keith Kaneshiro managed to win the race despite the fact that his support had a strong negative relationship with the support for both Carlisle and Prevedouros. Caldwell-friendly districts couldn’t make Caldwell mayor, but they were able to make Kaneshiro prosecutor.

And here are the relationships between the leading gubernatorial and mayoral candidates and voter turnout for each House district.

Source: Civil Beat analysis

Positive numbers mean that higher overall turnout helped a candidate. Negative numbers mean that lower overall turnout helped a candidate. Numbers closer to zero mean it didn’t particularly matter what the turnout was in determining a candidate’s chances of success.

The takeaway: Aiona probably needs a low overall turnout in November if he’s going to become the second consecutive Republican governor.

We don’t claim to have a monopoly on mathematical acumen. (In fact, yours truly — Mike, not Randy — failed Calculus III two different times freshman year of college, foreshadowing an eventual transition from Material Science Engineering to Journalism.) If you see any errors or other trends in the you’d like explored, please let us know.

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Nearly 300,000 Hawaii residents cast a ballot in the primary election held Saturday — about 43 percent of voters — but they weren’t spread evenly across the state.

A Civil Beat analysis of shows which Hawaii House of Representatives districts had the highest turnout percentages (54.7 percent in Aina Haina) and the lowest turnout percentages (22.7 percent in West Maui) and everything in between.

Hawaii House district numbers can be seen on this map. They are the black numbers not inside a box. The numbers inside boxes are Senate districts. The pink numbers are U.S. congressional districts.

Source: Hawaii Office of Elections

DISCUSSION Did you turn out on election day? Join the conversation.

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