By Jerry Burris
Advertiser Editorial Editor

Last Sunday, my colleague Johnny Brannon had an interesting article looking into voting patterns in the recent Honolulu mayoral election.

The article was based on extensive analysis by Assistant Managing Editor Sandra Oshiro, who used census data to come up with a sophisticated demographic analysis of every House district on O'ahu.

While the district profiles are less than perfect, they give us a fairly accurate snapshot of what the voters look like out there.

What jumped out was a pattern that suggests the controlling demographic factor in the mayoral primary was not ethnicity, geography or age.

It was income. Affluent voters tilted heavily toward Duke Bainum while less-affluent voters favored Mufi Hannemann.

This could simply be an artifact of this particular election, where the two candidates have not developed many clear differences on the issues. But it could also signal a significant turn in long-established Island voting patterns.

There was a time when the primary sorting "field" in predicting the behavior of Hawai'i voters was ethnicity.

This relies on generalizations, surely. But for the most part, one could count on AJA voters to cast Democratic ballots, Caucasian voters to case Republican ballots and Filipino voters to vote for Frank Fasi, whatever party he happened to represent.

Hawaiians, once staunchly Republican, tend to scatter their votes.

Now, if the Bainum-Hannemann primary is any indication, future analyses will have to concentrate less on ethnicity than on other elements, such as income or, more broadly, lifestyle.

In that election, if one happened to be relatively affluent, one tended to vote for Bainum no matter what your ethnicity. The reverse was also true. Hannemann tended to do better among lower-income residents, whether they were newcomers or kama'aina, and without reference to their ethnicity.

It may be that in partisan races such as the next governor's race, old patterns might return. But the guess is they won't.

As Hawai'i moves away from early-statehood years, other issues drive voters. You can see it in Oahu electoral map:

Districts such as Mililani and Kapolei, which look ethnically much like traditional Democratic districts, went for Bainum (and for Republican Linda Lingle two years ago). Since both Bainum and Hannemann are nominally Democrats even in this nonpartisan race, what was the appeal?

The difference seems to be this: These districts are younger, more affluent and more concerned about lifestyle issues such as where to put their kids in school and what kind of car to drive.

They are, in short, more concerned about themselves than about "us" or "our group" than were their parents.

It's a new way at looking at Hawai'i voters, and it surely will change, fundamentally, how campaigns are built.

Jerry Burris is editor of The Advertiser's editorial pages.