Poll shows Israel's Netanyahu romping in election

A new poll shows Israeli prime minister's hardline Likud Party handily winning the Jan. 22 elections despite the entry of a dovish new party into the race.

The Dialog poll gives Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud 39 of parliament's 120 seats, days after the party elected a slate of candidates that is more hawkish than the previous one.

It gives seven seats to the new party of former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the onetime chief negotiator with the Palestinians. Livni, who casts herself as an alternative to Netanyahu in the vote, took those seats away from other centrist parties, not Likud.

The poll, published Wednesday, shows Likud and its traditional right-wing and religious partners capturing 69 seats.

The survey of 514 respondents had a margin of error of 4.2 percent.