That’s an open question following Tuesday’s general election that saw reform-minded Maui ‘Ohana coalition candidates win four seats, including Kelly Takaya King’s upset of Council Member Don Couch for the South Maui residency seat.

Signs of the county’s changing political times can be found in voting patterns at the county’s 34 precincts.

Meanwhile, comparing vote totals and percentages of votes won by traditional incumbents and challengers shows some erosion of establishment officeholders’ strength and gains by challengers.

Looking at council races during two nonmayoral election years, this year and 2012:

Don Couch

* The average number of votes won this year by non-‘Ohana-backed incumbent council members was 24,268 this year, 3.7 percent lower than the 25,210 average in 2012.

* Average numbers of ballots taken by challengers was 19,275 this year, 63.8 percent higher than the 11,770 average in 2012.

* The average percentage of votes taken by incumbents was 45.8 percent this year, down 5.8 percentage points from 51.6 percent in 2012.

* The average percentage of ballots won by challengers was 36.4 percent this year, up 12.3 percentage points from 24.1 in 2012.

* This year, only Council Members Elle Cochran and Don Guzman, both ‘Ohana Coalition-backed candidates, had voter approval of more than 50 percent — 60.4 percent for Cochran in winning re-election to her West Maui residency seat and 58.1 percent for Guzman in returning to his Kahului seat — while other council incumbents took voter percentages ranging from 43 to 48.7 percent. Cochran and Guzman finished first and second as top vote-getters among council candidates.

Alika Atay

* While no council members went unchallenged this year, two went uncontested in 2014 and four were unopposed in 2012.

This year’s precinct voting patterns showed nonestablishment candidates relying on voters living outside of traditional Democratic, union-backed strongholds in Central and West Maui, Molokai and Lanai.

King and Alika Atay, another ‘Ohana Coalition-backed candidate, won despite competing against seasoned candidates with greater political name recognition and larger campaign war chests. Atay defeated former Council Member Dain Kane for the open Wailuku-Waihee-Waikapu council residency seat, and King came out ahead of Couch, a three-term council member and chairman of the council’s Planning Committee.

Precinct voting results showed Atay and King drew from the same wells of voter support, especially in Haiku and Paia, South Maui and Upcountry, while their opponents prevailed at most polls in Central Maui, West Maui, Molokai and Lanai.

For Atay and King, the linchpin was House District 13’s precinct 13-02 at the Haiku Community Center, a rich resource for progressive candidate votes as it was in 2014 when 74 percent of Haiku voters (2,588 to 909) backed the proposed moratorium on genetically modified organisms. (Ultimately, federal court action voided the initiative measure, although that remains under appeal.)

Dain Kane

Atay took 70.5 percent of the Haiku ballots, beating Kane by 1,425 votes — more than accounting for his 808-vote margin of victory. Atay had winning edges of 344 votes at Hana High and Elementary School and 247 votes at the Paia Community Center.

Aside from his Haiku win, Atay’s next-biggest winning margins were at the Kihei Community Center (374) and Kamali’i Elementary School (362).

Meanwhile, Kane took all but one of the Central Maui precincts. His biggest margin of victory was 589 ballots at Iao Intermediate School. And, he swept Molokai and Lanai precincts, where he had shown strength during the primary, grabbing a 497-vote winning margin at Kaunakakai Elementary School and a 238-vote win at Lanai High and Elementary School.

Atay won all four South Maui precincts, and all but three precincts in West Maui and Upcountry. Those wins for Kane were at Lahaina Intermediate School, by 129 votes; the Mayor Hannibal Tavares Community Center, by 97 votes; and the Kaunoa Senior Center in Spreckelsville, by eight votes.

Overall, Kane took 18 and Atay 16 of Maui’s 34 voting precincts.

Yuki Lei Sugimura

Voting patterns looked similar in King’s race with Couch, with the incumbent winning most of the traditional Democratic precincts in Central Maui, West Maui, Molokai and Lanai.

Couch’s largest winning margin was at Kahului Elementary School, where he had 472 more votes than King. His second-best showing was at Kaunakakai Elementary where he bested King by 396 votes.

Like Atay, King basked in voter love at the Haiku Community Center, where she took 68.3 percent of the ballots and had a winning margin of 1,262 votes. That was in excess of 200 votes of her eventual overall winning margin of 1,052.

King took all four South Maui precincts, with her largest win at Kamali’i Elementary School where she outpaced Couch by 527 votes, her second-biggest winning margin overall.

On Thursday, she said she was “very happy” to win at South Maui polls.

Napua Greig-Nakasone

“That was a huge goal for me in representing South Maui,” she said. “It was important for me to get that support.”

Couch said he expected to take a hit from South Maui voters because they perceived him as being unsympathetic to their opposition to sugar cane burning.

King swept Upcountry precincts, taking 327 votes at the Kula Community Center. And, in addition to Haiku, she grabbed a 197-vote win at the Paia Community Center and a 173-vote win at Hana school.

Couch said he was surprised he didn’t get more support Upcountry, especially after supporting farmers opposed to a bill that would have raised taxes on agriculturally zoned properties with homes.

Overall, King and Couch each won 17 precincts.

Meanwhile, the open Upcountry council residency race between Democrat- and union-backed Yuki Lei Kashiwa Sugimura and ‘Ohana Coalition-supported candidate Napua Greig-Nakasone showed that there’s still plenty of firepower in the old power bases.

Sugimura, whose career has included working as field representative for U.S. Sens. Daniel Akaka and Mazie Hirono, won all but one of the Central Maui precincts. (She failed to take Waihee Elementary School by 66 votes. Kane and Couch didn’t win there, either.)

Sugimura’s biggest winning margin was at Iao Intermediate School where she took 801 more votes than Greig-Nakasone. Sugimura took four of six Upcountry precincts, including the Mayor Hannibal Tavares Community Center in Pukalani (ahead by 283 votes) and the Kula Community Center (233 votes).

Greig-Nakasone did better than her coalition candidates on Molokai and Lanai, winning all but one precinct, and at that one, Kaunakakai, she lost by only two votes.

Like Atay and King, Greig-Nakasone was a hit among Haiku voters who gave her a winning margin of 1,007 over Sugimura in the precinct. But that was not enough for Greig-Nakasone to offset Sugimura’s wins elsewhere and her anemic wins at several precincts, including the Kenolio Recreation Center in Kihei (by 15 votes), Kamehameha III Elementary in Lahaina (by 18 votes), Maunaloa and Kualapuu elementary schools on Molokai (by 12 and nine votes, respectively).

However, Greig-Nakasone pulled out 200-plus-vote victory margins at Hana school (244 votes) and the Lahaina Civic Center (205 votes).

Greig-Nakasone said she knew Sugimura would do well in Central Maui because she’s from Wailuku and a Baldwin High School graduate. So, her campaign focused on other noncentral areas.

But, “it just wasn’t enough,” she said.

It was tough being a nonendorsed candidate running against one with ample campaign funds and the manpower for canvassing from union supporters, Greig-Nakasone said.

She said she thought she did better than other coalition candidates on Molokai because she’s taught there for the last three years, but her association with the ‘Ohana Coalition and its support of the GMO moratorium and opposition to Monsanto hurt her with voters on Molokai.

Overall, Sugimura and Greig-Nakasone split Maui’s precincts with 17 each.

Political observer and retired college professor Dick Mayer, who advised coalition candidates, said the group intentionally ran a full slate of nine candidates for council seats, marking the first time in at least 20 years that all nine council seats were contested in a single election.

King said she appreciated being included among the slate of ‘Ohana candidates, but she said it was not so much a group of candidates working together on their campaigns as it was a “progressive group” pledging to be more open and responsive to the public than the “good ol’ boys” who make decisions behind closed doors.

The group included some, but not all, of those who backed the GMO moratorium, she said, although it drew “a lot of energy from the SHAKA Movement” that led the fight for the initiative.

Greig-Nakasone said the coalition’s backing both helped and hurt her campaign.

It helped by gaining her more name recognition and support among those who agree with the group’s views, but it hurt when negative campaigning targeted ‘Ohana candidates as a group of “activists,” she said.

Greig-Nakasone said she would have preferred that the coalition focus more on the candidates’ credentials than on the issues. “Our candidates have strong education and community service backgrounds, and that really didn’t come out,” she said.

Mayer said the coalition used lessons learned in the anti-GMO initiative drive, employing social media, email and post office mailings to reach voters. ‘Ohana postcards for the candidates were put out by the same group that initiated the GMO initiative, he said.

Even coalition candidates who didn’t win “did much better than they would have done otherwise,” he said.

The coalition’s campaign tactics were “not a new invention,” Mayer said. “They’re a replication of what was successful in getting the initiative passed,” he said.

* Brian Perry can be reached at bperry@mauinews.com.