Kadima party race enters final stretch

A candidate's prediction of victory, down to the decimal point, energized yesterday the final stretch of a lackluster race to succeed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as leader of Israel's Kadima party.

In one of the boldest political forecasts in Israel in years, Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz, running second in opinion polls to Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in the Kadima contest, confidently declared a precise result for tomorrow's vote.

"I believe that on Wednesday I will win in one round with 43.7 percent of the vote," Mofaz, a former general, said on Sunday, basing the figure on a statistical model prepared by an American expert working for his campaign.