Sharon leads opinion polls over Barak

JERUSALEM, JAN 24: Israel's leading hawk Ariel Sharon maintained a double-digit lead over Prime Minister Ehud Barak in opinion polls publi...

JERUSALEM, JAN 24: Israel’s leading hawk Ariel Sharon maintained a double-digit lead over Prime Minister Ehud Barak in opinion polls published on Wednesday, two weeks before Israel’s Prime ministerial election.

But one of the two polls taken on Monday night showed a record quarter of Israelis had yet to make up their minds.

A Dahaf Institute poll of 600 Israelis for the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth showed 46 percent backing Sharon and 30 percent Barak, a drop of a few percentage points for each–while a record 24 percent were undecided.

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A Gallup Poll of 670 Israelis for the newspaper Maariv showed Sharon getting 51 percent to Barak’s 31 percent of the vote.

Barak, 58, called the election under pressure from parliament over his handling of peace talks with the Palestinians and his failure to quell a Palestinian uprising.

He regards the vote as a referendum on peace moves, which resumed this week at ministerial level in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Taba.

Sharon, 72-year-old architect of Israel’s 1982 Lebanon invasion and a champion of Jewish settlement on Israeli-occupied lands, has portrayed himself as a better peacemaker despite his opposition to territorial concessions demanded by Palestinians.