The race to become Israel’s next prime minister has tightened, with the latest polls showing the right-wing Likud party under Benjamin Netanyahu is losing ground to his centrist challenger, Tzipi Livni.

Ms Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, has led her Kadima party to a late sprint that has seen it catch up on Likud. Polls show that Kadima is not only gaining ground, but that Likud is losing support to the far-right Yisraeli Beiteinu group.

Neither Kadima nor Likud will have sufficient strength to govern on their own, and analysts predict a complex and prolonged period of coalition talks after election day on February 10. According to a poll released on Friday by Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, the Likud party is set to win 27 seats and Kadima 25 seats. However, with a record number of undecided voters, that gap could narrow further still.

It is customary for the president to ask the leader of the largest group in parliament to form a government, but there is an outside chance that he will turn to whoever enjoys the most support from other groups. This has led to frantic efforts both by Ms Livni and Mr Netanyahu to woo other party leaders ahead of next Tuesday.

”A few weeks ago, Likud seemed to have victory sewed up. Now it is in real danger of losing out to Kadima,” Haaretz commented.

Another poll, published in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily, also showed a distance of just two seats between the two front-runners.

Ms Livni and Mr Netanyahu have very different political agendas. The Kadima leader has been at the forefront of efforts to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians, and has vowed to make the pursuit of a two-state solution aimed at ending the Middle East conflict a central plank of government.

Mr Netanyahu, in contrast, argues that the creation of a Palestinian state would be detrimental to Israel’s security interests, because such a state would become a haven for radical Islamists.

However, both leaders have promised to build broad coalition governments with parties that do not necessarily share their core political beliefs. With any government likely to need the support of at least three or four parties, Mr Netanyahu and Ms Livni will be forced to compromise no matter what the precise result of the 2009 election turns up.