A poll carried out for Haaretz on
Wednesday, conducted by Dialog under the supervision of Professor Camil
Fuchs of Tel Aviv University, shows that Netanyahu easily defeats all
his possible rivals from the center-left bloc. As far as the public is
concerned, Netanyahu is more suitable for post of prime
minister than any of his potential rivals, who are starting to look like the Republican Presidential candidates early on in the game.
At the same time, the Likud-right wing-ultra-Orthodox bloc has
increased its strength to 68 Knesset seats, while the center-left bloc
has gone down to 52, compared to the blocs' respective strength in the
outgoing Knesset and the previous poll.
The candidate with the highest support after Netanyahu is Tzipi Livni, who fails to muster more than half of the support
attributed to Netanyahu (57 percent - 28 percent ), as she flirts with the idea of returning to politics with her former Boss/Rival Ehud Olmert.
Asked
about their satisfaction with Netanyahu's performance as prime minister - after furfilling a full year 4 year term -
45 percent were satisfied and 45 percent were
dissatisfied, marking a 15 percent improvement from the last poll two weeks ago, in
which only 38 were satisfied compared to 53 who were not.
The full poll will be published in Friday's weekend paper. However the results show the Likud gaining a few more Knesset seat, and Yair Lapid's new party considerably stronger, than previous polls.