|
JERUSALEM, March 27 (Xinhua) -- Israeli media
released final polls to be published before Israeli elections close on Tuesday
night show that much of the voting public remain undecided on Monday.
A poll conducted by newspaper Haaretz has centrist Kadima party polling at 36 seats, while polls by Maariv and
Yedioth Ahronothboth predict Kadima to get 34. A Jerusalem Post poll estimates
that Kadima will garner between 33 to 34 seats, while Labor, between 20 to 21
seats and Likud steady at 15.
Since election regulations forbid publication of
further polls on Monday, the first projection of the actual results will be
released immediately after voting ends at 10:00 p.m.(2000 GMT)Tuesday night.
According to Haaretz's poll, there are still 22
percent of the voting public that haven't made up their minds.
In a last-minute effort to encourage more people to
vote, Israeli Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who heads the Kadima in
Tuesday's polls, made an appeal for public during a cabinet meeting on Sunday.
"I call on all Israeli citizens to realize their
right to participate in the elections and to vote. There is no more appropriate
and significant expression of civil rights than of voting and thus determining
the fate of the country and the composition of its government," said Olmert.
On the eve of the election day, polling firms are
concerned by three main anomalies that could skew predictions -- low voter
turnout, the high level of floating votes and the large numbers of youngsters on
cellphones whom they can't poll by land line.
For politicians, the question of whom voters would
elect on March 28 seemed less important than the issue of who would vote.
Campaign officials from the three major parties -- centrist Kadima, left-wing
Labor and right-wing Likud -- concurred that the popularity of last summer's
disengagement set a new precedent that many parties began to re-evaluate their
stances on territorial concessions. As a result, the platforms of the three
parties have come to closely resemble one another and merge towards the center.
The three rivals have focused their last-ditch campaigning on trying to woo the
undecided voters.
Labor believes that many of these voters are former
Labor supporters who abandoned the party for Kadima, but are now reconsidering.
Kadima fears that "tactical voting" -- voting for Labor in order to ensure that
it will be Kadima's senior coalition partner -- could cause three to six seats
of floaters to move from it to Labor.
The Likud, too, is ready for a rearguard battle over
about 100,000 of its voters who either do not plan to vote this time or who are
still undecided.
The chairman of Likud's election-day headquarters
Knesset member Moshe Kahalon instructed over the weekend branch managers and
activists to literally fight for every voter by getting them to the polls.
To safeguard Tuesday's polls, Israeli police and
security forces have been on high alert throughout the country since Sunday, 48
hours before the opening of the polling stations, after receiving more than 70
alerts of planned attacks to coincide on election day.
Police closed the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to
visitors from Monday morning and will close the site throughout Tuesday to avoid
possible militants attacks.
The Jerusalem District Police also instructed its
officers to be on heightened alert in light of the possibility of an attack by
extremists looking to cause riots within Jerusalem's Old City. Israeli Defense
Minister Shaul Mofaz instructed security forces to do everything possible to
ensure that the elections will not be disrupted.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said 22,000
uniformed and undercover officers would deploy at city entrances and shopping
malls and other public places deemed possible targets. Enditem |