HONOLULU -- Ed Case was front-runner in KITV-4-Honolulu Star Bulletin's recent poll, the first of the election year, which he said has made him a target in the race to fill the remainder of U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie's congressional term.

Abercrombie, a Democrat, has said he will resign on Feb. 28 to focus on his campaign for governor. The earliest a special election could be held is May 1.

Case was 15 percentage points ahead of Democrat Colleen Hanabusa if the election were held at the time of the poll, which was taken in mid-January.

In a general election scenario, Case was more than 30 points ahead of the only Republican in the race, Charles Djou.

Case said it was good to be ahead, but now he is also a target.

"The negative of being the front-runner is you are going to get attacked," he said. "People have to turn the campaign negative against you in order to advance. They are going to try to tear you down. I am not looking forward to that."

Political analyst Neal Milner said negative campaigning could hurt both Case and Hanabusa because voter studies show negative campaigning can make voters ambivalent.

"It isn’t so much that they switch to the other candidate," he said. "They don't vote. The turnout gets suppressed."

Milner said Republican Djou could benefit from voter ambivalence if his voters go to the polls in big numbers in the winner-take-all special election.

"This Hawaii special election will be getting a lot of national attention because of the victory of Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts election," Milner said.

But Case said Hawaii is different. A surprise Republican victory in a Democratic state is not likely to happen here, he said.

Milner agrees.

"Just because it worked there doesn't mean it is going to work here, and that's because there were a lot of different things that worked for Republicans in that situation," Milner said.