Netanyahu's party trails in last polls before Israel election

JERUSALEM -- The last polls just days before Israel's election show Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party trailing behind the center-left opposition.

Poll results in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper on Friday gave the Zionist Union, comprised of labor and a center-left party, 26 seats over 22 for Netanyahu's hawkish Likud party.

It polled 1,032 people with a margin of error of 2.5 percent. Other polls had similar results.

The March 17 election is widely seen as a vote of confidence in Netanyahu, whose campaign mainly focuses on security. But after years of rapidly increasing living costs, many Israelis are turning to dovish and centrist parties that focus on social and economic issues.

Netanyahu showed concern over the declining numbers in local media this week and called on his supporters to turn out.

In a sign of internal discontent in Likud, Dan Meridor, a former leading Likud politician, told Yediot he will not vote for Netanyahu.

Last week, Netanyahu appealed to the U.S. Congress to reject the Obama administration's negotiations with five other world powers and Iran that would allow the regime to have a nuclear program for peaceful reasons. But the nature of his speech - two weeks before the Israeli elections, and at the sole invitation of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio - injected his appearance with a degree of partisanship and caused some friction in the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

While Netanyahu's speech was delivered to the U.S. Congress, his primary audience may well have been Israel's voters.

In a comedy show that aired just before the speech, a mock Netanyahu was portrayed filling out U.S. immigration forms on the plane. Under "reason for visit" he declared: "one or two seats" in parliament.