Acting PM Olmert - Kadima keeps dropping
Photo: Gil Yochanan
Poll: Kadima, Likud down
Kadima continues to drop, gets 37 Knesset seats in latest pre-election survey; Likud down to 14 seats, Labor holding steady at 20. Meanwhile, smaller parties gain strength, Shas, Israel Our Home moving up
With general elections less than three weeks away, frontrunner Kadima is continuing to drop, the latest survey published by Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth Thursday morning shows.
According to the Mina Tzemach/Dahaf poll, Kadima lost another Knesset seat and is down to 37 seats, marking a drop of six mandates in less than a month. On February 10, Kadima reached 43 seats in the poll and has been going down since that point.
On Wednesday, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared the party has in fact won the elections "and the question is only how many mandates it will win."
The Labor party, headed by Amir Peretz, is holding steady with 20 Knesset seats, while the Likud, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, continues to drop, this time winning only 14 seats.
Meanwhile, religious Sephardic party Shas is up to 11 seats, while Avigdor Lieberman's right-wing Israel Our Home is up to 10 mandates and is increasingly emerging as the fifth largest party in the upcoming elections. The leftist Meretz is up to six seats.
The right-wing union of National Religious Party and National Union dropped to eight seats, Arab parties are also set to win eight seats, and United Torah Judaism wins six seats according to the poll. Other parties are set to remain without Knesset representation, the survey showed.
The poll results are based on the responses provided by 700 people who constitute a representative sample of Israel's adult population.
