Israel’s Likud officials blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the party’s poor showing in the upcoming polls, saying the election campaign was a “colossal failure.”

Israel’s Likud officials blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the party’s poor showing in the upcoming polls, saying the election campaign was a “colossal failure.”

“The Zionist Union will be larger than Likud after the election. This, it seems, is already a fact. The question is what the gap between the two will be. Even if we manage to form the next government, this campaign was a colossal failure.

Netanyahu is primarily responsible,” Israeli daily Haaretz quoted a senior Likud member as saying, ahead of Election Day on Tuesday.

“Everything went through him during this election season, and the situation isn’t good. The election campaign didn’t function. Netanyahu kept Likud ministers far from decisions,” the senior party figure said. “His excessive focus [on himself in the campaign] and his lack of faith in the party’s Knesset members prompted him to staff the campaign with people who haven’t proven themselves.”

Another Likud official said, “Netanyahu was shown to be a very weak card in this election. He decided to put himself at the front, and forgot that he has an excellent team of ministers and MKs behind him. The public hardly saw them. It turns out the public is weary of Netanyahu, but he didn’t think that was a good enough reason to scale back his presence in the campaign.”

But Likud members don’t think all is lost. “As of right now, Netanyahu is the only one who can forge an independent coalition based on the latest polls. (Isaac) Herzog will have to include Likud in his government if he’s asked to form a coalition, and Netanyahu has already said he won’t allow that,” said one party official, according to Haaretz.

Herog, the Labor leader, has formed an electoral alliance with former justice minister Tzipi Livni under the Zionist Union banner.