As for Hawaii, its voting patterns have never been extremely clear. Sure, it's usually more democratic than the nation as a whole, and in 2008 it's given Obama a stalinian victory, but it's used to pretty weird swings (from giving Humphrey a landslide in 1968 to supporting Nixon by an even more commanding margin in 1972, to narrowly voting for Carter when he won in 1976, to still narrowly supporting him when he got trounced nationwide, etc...). My guess is that Alaska and Hawaii, being recent State, have taken a few decades to "stabilize" their voting patterns, after experiencing wild swings in both directions (remember LBJ also won Alaska with 66% !).
Hawaii seems to have, despite it's liberal nature, a strong pro-incumbent bias in elections. Just four years before Obama, a native son after all, won it by a sweeping margin, it was relatively close between Kerry and Bush. At some point (which was even mentioned by Polish press) Hawaii appeared to be a tossup.
