Tel Aviv - Some 74,000 members of Israel's ruling Kadima party are slated to go to the polls Wednesday to choose a new leader, with the front-runners, Tzipi Livni and Shaul Mofaz, hoping to win enough votes to avoid a second round of voting.

Polling begins at 10 am (0700 GMT) and ends 12 hours later, with initial results expected around midnight and final results expected early Thursday morning. Israel's electronic media, however, will broadcast the results of exit polls once voting ends.

Livni, Israel's current foreign minister, is forecast by pre-election surveys to win handily, but Mofaz, the current transport minister, is confident he will take the contest, even going so far as to name his winning margin - 43.7 per cent of the vote.

The other two candidates, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit, are expected to garner around 6 per cent of the vote each, although they hope to win enough support to prevent any candidate from winning 40 per cent of the vote, and thus force a second round of polling.

The victorious candidate will replace discredited Kadima leader and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who announced in July that he was quitting the party leadership, and then the premiership, because of ongoing investigations against him for alleged corruption.

The new Kadima leader will try to form a new coalition government, but if he or she fails, early elections by March 2009, a year ahead of schedule, are likely. dpa