(Adds details) By Wafa Amr RAMALLAH, West Bank, Dec 17 (Reuters) - The governing Palestinian faction Hamas would lose a legislative election to Fatah rivals if it were held today, a survey conducted just before President Mahmoud Abbas called for new polls found. The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll, conducted from Dec. 14-16 and published on Sunday, found 61 percent of Palestinians favoured holding early elections, with 37 percent opposed. It showed Abbas's once dominant Fatah winning 42 percent of a parliamentary vote and the Islamist Hamas 36 percent. Remaining voters would back independent factions or said they were undecided. Abbas sent shockwaves through the Palestinian polity on Saturday by calling for new parliamentary and presidential elections in a bid to break a deadlock with Hamas partly over whether and how to pursue diplomacy with Israel and the West. Hamas, which was voted into power in January, rejected the proposal as undemocratic and tantamount to a coup. Despite the apparent public backlash against Hamas, the survey found Abbas would only narrowly win a presidential race against his top Hamas rival, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, by 46 percent to 45 percent of votes. Abbas has previously said he would not run again. "It is obvious that the people's support for early elections is a protest against both Hamas and President Abbas," Khalil Shikaki, director of the respected Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, told Reuters. But Shikaki also said Abbas's popularity could be buoyed by his call for early elections. This appeared to be corroborated by another survey, which was conducted by Ramallah-based pollster Near East Consulting after Abbas's declaration. It quoted 60 percent of respondents as saying they trusted him most as Palestinian leader. Forty percent of those polled said they preferred Haniyeh. Shikaki described Palestinians' support for the idea of early elections as a default option after they concluded Abbas's previous strategy of trying to form a Fatah-Hamas coalition government had failed. The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll was conducted among 1,270 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The margin of error was 3 percent. The Near East Consulting poll had 643 respondents and a 3.8 percent margin of error.
