Olmert’s Kadima still leads Israel opinion polls

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s centrist Kadima party
appears to have consolidated its lead as campaigning for the
country’s general election swings into high gear, surveys
showed on Thursday.

Opinion polls published in three Israeli newspapers
indicated Kadima had stabilized its front-running position
ahead of the March 28 ballot following a drop in support
earlier in the month.

The opinion polls gave Kadima between 37 to 38 seats in the
120-seat parliament, far ahead of the center-left Labor Party
and the right-wing Likud party.

The number was lower than the 40 seats the party had been
expected to win under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Support for Kadima has slipped slightly since Ehud Olmert
took over as interim prime minister after Sharon suffered a
crippling stroke on January 4 that left him in a coma.

“The question of who will win the elections has already
been decided. The test now is whether we will be strong enough
to do what we want and for this we need as many seats as
possible,” Olmert said at a campaign rally on Wednesday.

Neither Labor nor Likud have shown any sign of gaining
momentum ahead of the election. The surveys in the Haaretz
daily and mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth and Maariv
newspapers gave between 19 to 20 seats to Labor and 14 to 17
seats to Likud.

But the number of floating voters appeared to be on the
rise with 24 seats in parliament still up for grabs, the
Haaretz poll found.

Parties stepped up election campaigning this week with
television and radio advertisements as politicians seek to
court undecided voters.