Republican attorney general candidate Phill Kline holds a seven-point lead over Democratic opponent Chris Biggs, but nearly one in five voters are still undecided, according to The World Company Poll released Thursday.

“That race is definitely worth keeping an eye on,” said Brad Coker, a pollster for Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc., which conducted the survey.

Kline was leading Biggs 44 percent to 37 percent with 19 percent undecided. The poll of 625 likely Kansas voters was taken Tuesday and Wednesday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Burdett Loomis, a political science professor at Kansas University, said Biggs had a long-shot chance of overtaking Kline in Tuesday’s election.

But “you’d still have to bet on Kline,” Loomis said.

The two candidates are engaged in a hotly contested race for an open position  the current attorney general, Republican Carla Stovall, did not seek re-election.

Biggs has been the Geary County prosecutor the past 14 years. He was named state prosecutor of the year in 1998. Kline served as a state representative from Shawnee from 1992 to 2000. While in the Legislature, he became a leader on tax cuts and helped push through victim’s rights legislation.

The World Company Poll shows Kline’s name is better recognized by voters, but that he also has a higher “unfavorable” rating than Biggs, 26 percent to 9 percent.

“Biggs is the one the electorate really doesn’t know very well. It’s a solvable problem,” Loomis said. “The more people become familiar with Biggs, he seems to do better. How much he gets known in the next four days makes a difference.”

Biggs was unopposed in the Democratic Party primary, while Kline won a hard-hitting three-man race in the GOP primary.

Whitney Watson, a campaign spokesman for Kline, said the poll wouldn’t affect Kline’s campaigning.

“It’s still business as usual. Phill is out in western Kansas today,” Watson said. “Voters are receptive to his message about the breadth of his experience and he is strong on locking up violent criminals.”

Cindy Luxem, a spokeswoman for Biggs, said, “Chris Biggs is the most qualified candidate for this position and he is going to convince the undecided voters.”