Labor passes Kadima, poll finds

New Labor leader Shelly Yacimovich vows to work hard to transfer the poll results into success at the ballot box.

By LAHAV HARKOV, GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN
Shelly Yacimovich_311 (photo credit: LAHAV HARKOV)
Shelly Yacimovich_311
(photo credit: LAHAV HARKOV)
The Labor Party would win four more seats than Kadima and return to its former status as one of Israel’s two largest parties if elections were held today, a Dialog poll published Monday in Haaretz found.
The poll predicted that Likud would win 26 seats, Labor 22, and Kadima and Israel Beiteinu 18. The poll found that the center- right bloc would gain a seat at the expense of the center-left, with the blocs divided 66-54.
At a rally in Givatayim organized by MK Isaac Herzog, new Labor leader Shelly Yacimovich vowed to work hard to transfer the poll results into success at the ballot box.
“We’re bigger than Kadima because the public sees we are the real alternative,” Yacimovich said. “No one will rain Knesset seats on us just like that. We can’t trust polls. We need to fight for the public.
This isn’t a rose garden.”
Kadima leaders took pains to downplay the poll. Kadima council chairman Haim Ramon said he learned from experience that new Labor leaders always receive a bounce in the polls but end up winning 10 mandates less than polls had predicted immediately after they were elected.
“The polls can change 100 times between now and the election,” Kadima MK Meir Sheetrit said.
Israel Beiteinu head Avigdor Lieberman told party activists at a pre-Rosh Hashana toast in Jerusalem: “I am happy that there are good polls. But being here and sensing the electricity in the air, I don’t need any polls to see we are going in the right direction.”
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu hosted coalition MKs and their spouses at his official residence in Jerusalem on Monday night for a pre- Rosh Hashana toast to boost morale in the coalition.