Hawaii Miscellany

-Voters in Hawaii are happy being part of the United States.  Only 14% favor seceding to form their own country with 74% opposed and 12% unsure.  Voters who identify their ethnicity as Native Hawaiian actually come pretty close to break even on the issue with 38% for independence and 45% opposed but beyond that group there's not much support for breaking off.

-Hawaii voters strongly dislike the Tea Party (28/51), but they're not really sold on the Occupy Wall Street movement either (38/35). Still when it comes to which of the two they have a higher opinion of Occupy Wall Street wins out 44-29.  Linda Lingle definitely knows what she's doing when she embraces the moderate Republican label and shies away from the Tea Party- that's the only way a GOP politician can prosper in Hawaii.

-When it comes to professional sports team preferences Hawaii is closely divided among a variety of teams that either have a major national fan base or are on the west coast.  Their favorite baseball team is ever so narrowly the Yankees at 16%, followed by the Angels at 14%, Phillies at 13%, Giants at 10%, Dodgers at 7%, Braves and Cubs at 5%, Mariners at 4%, and Padres at 1%. 25% say they're for another team or don't have one at all.

On the NFL front a team with a huge national following but no proximity to Hawaii wins out as well with the Packers at 17%, followed by the 49ers at 14%, Cowboys at 13%, Raiders at 8%, Steelers at 6%, Broncos at 5%, Giants and Chargers at 3%, and Seahawks at 2%. 28% say someone else or that they don't pull for an NFL team.

-Finally Hawaii voters are glad that the Warrior Football team is moving to the Mountain West- 42% favor that shift to only 20% who wish the team was remaining in the WAC.  This is reflective of a broader trend we've seen in polling on conference realignment.  Fans generally are resistant to their schools shifting conference before it's actually happened- we've seen that with Texas, Missouri, West Virginia, Connecticut, and Iowa State to name a few schools.  But once the school has made the decision to move and is plowing ahead with it fans are pretty supportive of the change- we've seen that with Nebraska, Texas A&M, and now Hawaii.

Full results here

Comments

[Jason]

I'm surprised a polling firm would be so off in assessing the results of a poll, based on what I read here in this entry. It's a rather manini part of the poll though -- the sports teams -- that I'm talking about.

I actually personally participated in this poll -- they called me on my land line, and I answered all the questions. The sports team questions came in at the end, and surprised me. I was further surprised at the limited number of specific teams offered to assess my favorite.

Given that, you can't draw any definitive conclusions (which you did above) on which team was the "favorite":

You wrote: "Their favorite baseball team is ever so narrowly the Yankees at 16%"

But then mention that "25% say they're for another team or don't have one at all."

Given those two facts, you can't state for a fact that the Yanks are the favorite -- it's statistically possible that all 25% (or at least 17%) liked a single "other team" which would make THAT the favorite.

But given the limited polling data, you can't tell for sure.

But, as I said, it's a relatively small part of the overall polling data.