Part of the hardening of local politics this year has been driven by reaction to political polls.

Politicians, political reporters and most voters are always weighing the results of polls, measuring them against their own gut instincts and experiences.

The difference this year is the bitter denunciation by some candidates who are not winning in a media poll.

For instance, this year Star-Advertiser pollster Rebecca Ward, president of Ward Research, said she was shocked to see the vehement attacks by former Gov. Linda Lingle’s U.S. Senate campaign team.

"It feels that the tone has changed toward polling. I don’t know if it is due to the dueling polls you see in mainland media, but here it is something new, it is almost vitriolic," Ward said.

The standard reply by politicians trailing in a poll has always been to say, "The only poll I care about is the one on election day."

Of course that is not true. Politicians always take polls — they do it to find out where and with whom they are winning and losing. Politicians’ polls are not so much about the horse-race question of who is winning the entire race, but more about what commercials are working, what issues are untapped or overworked, and what specific groups of voters want to see in their leaders.

Of course they also include the horse-race question and now put out a press release announcing the favorable parts of their own polls.

In October, voters heard Lingle’s campaign manager Bob Lee disparage a soon-to-be-released poll.

"Hawaii News Now in coordination with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser will release a heavily skewed poll showing Governor Linda Lingle far behind her opponent Mazie Hirono.

"They will report a 22-point difference between Gov. Lingle and Mazie Hirono. We know that is simply outrageous and completely out of step with the on-the-ground reality," Lee said.

The criticized poll showed Democratic Rep. Hirono beating Republican Lingle 57 percent to 35 percent.

The official result from the Tuesday election was Hirono with 61.6 percent to Lingle with 36.8 percent.

Back in October, the Lingle campaign argued that "our nationally renowned pollster, who has conducted nightly tracking throughout the last three weeks and uses historically accurate demographics, shows our campaign in a dead heat."

The pollster, Jan R. van Lohuizen, with Washington, D.C.-based Voter/Consumer Research, said in a memo quoted by Lee that the media poll had 60 percent Democratic response and their own poll had the Democratic percentage at 44 percent.

Ward, however, argues that her poll does not ask those polled to say if they identify as Republicans or Democrats because "we all hate labels and we hate to label ourselves."

Instead, Ward’s poll at the end of the questions asks, "Which party do you usually find yourself voting for?"

It consistently returns 60 percent of those polled saying they usually vote for Democrats.

A week earlier, Lingle released portions of her own internal poll claiming, "Mazie Hirono and I are literally neck and neck with only 20 days to election day."

This points up the most valuable reason for the news media to take polls in election years: They serve as a needed fact check to the new hyper-political polling done by the politicians.

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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.