By Chad Blair 10/17/2012

With less than three weeks to go before Election Day, Linda Lingle's U.S. Senate campaign has released a memo from its pollster saying the race against Mazie Hirono "is a very close race."

"In our nightly tracking the race is very close, we're down by 3 or 4 points," Jan R. van Lohuizen of Voter / Consumer Research said in the memo dated Wednesday. "This is a significant gain from our track in late September. The Hirono campaign is probably seeing the same trend, since they're now attacking on Medicare."

The numbers are sharply different than a Civil Beat Poll conducted in late September that show the Democrat Hirono with a 16 percentage point lead over the Republican. The Hirono campaign released internal numbers in early October that were very similar with the Civil Beat Poll.

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"As we've been saying, our race is a statistical dead-heat," Lenny Klompus, Lingle's deputy campaign manager and communications director, said in a statement. "With 20 days to go, and early walk-in voting beginning Monday, Linda Lingle is perfectly positioned to win this race against Mazie Hirono — just as she's done before."

http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2012/10/17/17400-lingle-pollster-very-close-race/