(INN).The Likud party, headed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, has opened up a larger lead over other parties in the latest poll, mostly at the expense of the Labor party.
The poll, taken before the Prime Minister spoke in Congress on Tuesday, also showed that respondents favored Netanyahu over Opposition leader Tzipi Livni as prime minister by a margin of 38-35 percent. The effect on voters of the Prime Minister's speech to Congress on Tuesday is unknown.
If elections were held today, the Likud would win 34 Knesset seats, seven more than it now has, according to the Sarid Institute survey carried out for Israel’s Channel 2 television. Kadima, headed by Livni, would lose one mandate and win 27 seats, while the recently-split Labor party would win only eight places in the Knesset. Under the leadership of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who left the party earlier this year, Labor won 13 seats in the last election.
Respondents awarded Yisrael Beiteinu, headed by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, 14 Knesset Members, one less than it now has.
According to a Channel 1 poll: Likud would gain 6 seats on the expense of the opposition party Kadima, Likud would win 33 Knesset Seats, with opposition party Kadima dropping from 27 to 22 seats, Lieberman 17, and the entire Right wing bloc would win a majority of 70 seats out of 120.