Congressman Charles Djou said it’s a myth that the 1st Congressional District is entrenched Democratic turf.

“This particular congressional district voted Republican for the last four gubernatorial elections in a row,” Djou told the Los Angeles Times for a story about Republicans’ optimistic outlook on holding onto President Barack Obama’s home district in November.

Is that true? It seems like it should be easy to check, but it’s not.

The Hawaii Office of Elections has available on its website the statewide, county-by-county and precinct-by-precinct vote results from the 2006, 2002 and 1998 general elections, though just a statewide report for 1994. A breakdown by U.S. congressional district is not available, multiple representatives of the office told Civil Beat.

The Legislative Reference Bureau’s Library Reference Desk similarly does not have the data sorted by congressional district, we were told.

We asked Djou’s spokesman three questions:

1. Was the congressman quoted accurately by the L.A. Times?
2. Is he referring to the general elections in 2006, 2002, 1998 and 1994?
3. Can you please point to the data or news stories that back up the claim?

We haven’t heard from them, but with some simple math we can draw conclusions from the public record. Civil Beat started with the vote results for the City and County of Honolulu and subtracted the vote results for those state House districts and election precincts that fall outside of the 1st Congressional District — essentially, rural Oahu. ¹

A little bit of data entry yields some results. In 2006, Linda Lingle dominated challenger Randall Iwase, more than doubling his vote output on the island of Oahu on her way to an easy win. She secured 106,000 votes in the 1st Congressional District to Iwase’s 56,000.

Source: Civil Beat analysis of Office of Elections data

Four years earlier, Lingle managed to beat former Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono on the strength of her Oahu performance. The two were essentially tied on the neighbor islands, with Hirono actually holding a tiny edge. Lingle pulled in 8,000 more votes than her opponent in urban Honolulu and nearly 10,000 more in rural Oahu to become governor.

Source: Civil Beat analysis of Office of Elections data

So far, Djou’s claim is correct for the most recent two gubernatorial elections. However, in 1998, Ben Cayetano and Hirono edged Lingle thanks almost entirely to their advantage in the 1st Congressional District. Maui, the Big Island and rural Oahu all went for the GOP candidate, but Cayetano made up the gap in his re-election bid in urban Honolulu.

Source: Civil Beat analysis of Office of Elections data

Things get a little trickier in trying to analyze the first election on Djou’s list. In 1994, Cayetano topped “Best Party” candidate and longtime Honolulu mayor Frank Fasi. Republican Pat Saiki, the last Republican to represent Hawaii in Congress before Djou, came in third in the election, though it’s not immediately clear how she did on Oahu or in Honolulu because the Office of Elections has only published the statewide results [pdf] to its website.

We’ll look into what happened in 1994 and post our findings soon. For now, as to the veracity of Djou’s quote in the L.A. Times, Meatloaf sums it up best: Two out of three ain’t bad.

Clearly, Djou’s attempt to paint the 1st Congressional District red based on past election results is incorrect. But given that Lingle did carry the district in the past two elections, we felt “barely true” captured the validity of his statement better than “false.”