This morning the Haaretz newspaper released new polling on the upcoming election here in Israel, set for February 10, and the results show a shift towards both the Labor Party and the Center-Left more broadly.

Overall, there is now a 60-seat to 60-seat split between the right and the center/left, a switch from the 65-seat to 53-seat split in favor of the right in the prior round of polling. Down to the specific numbers, Bibi Netanyahu and the right wing Likud still lead with 32 seats, up two seats. However, these recent gains have come at the expense of other right parties. The centrist Kadima Party headed by Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni pulls in 27 seats in current polling, up a single seat. Ehud Barak, head of the left wing Labour Party and also the current Defense Minister, earned the greatest gains in the recent survey, up five seats to a total of 16.

The election is, and will continue remain for the next month until balloting, fluid. Israeli politics always is. But this year, in particular, there is quite a bit of potential for movement. There are a number of factors behind this environment. For starters, both Netanyahu and Barak are former Prime Ministers turned out of office by the voters, in 1999 and 2001, respectively, and the outgoing leader of the Kadima Party,  Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, is leaving office with an anemic 33 percent popularity rating -- which is double the 14 percent average level of support he has enjoyed since the Lebanon War in 2006. In other words, none of the three leading contenders comes into next month's election in a particularly strong position.

Moreover, the general ideologies of the three main parties have largely been discounted by many in the country. The far right's onetime "One Israel" aims, which would have led to either the end to the Jewish nature of Israel or the Democratic nature of the state due to demographic shifts, have not worked. The left's attempts to deal with the Palestinians, largely rebuffed at Camp David in 2000 and during the subsequent fighting, have been rejected by many. And the center's faith in unilateralism, pulling out of Lebanon and then Gaza without coordination with the other side, has yielded armed conflicts with both neighbors.

In short, there aren't a whole lot of positive choices facing Israelis today, and thus it's understandable that sentiments about the upcoming elections are not hardened. Next week, I'll be meeting with leading party advisers, as well as a number of academics, reporters and others, to try to flesh out more of what is going on in the country, both focusing specifically on the election as well as the conflict with Gaza, so stay tuned.

Update [2009-1-1 14:38:29 by Jonathan Singer]: More from Ben Smith on how some of the recent shifts within the electorate are linked to the current conflict in Gaza.