I’m not going to talk numbers, but rather a possible and likely scenario.

To begin with Kadima will not do anywhere as well as they and the media are planning, and the Likud will do better than everyone expects. But either way a lot of Kadima members are going to be very disappointed that they aren’t being made into Ministers and the like.

And why won’t they become VIPs?

Because no matter how many seats he has, Olmert is still going to have to heavily reward Lieberman (can anyone name anyone else on his list?), Shas, Aguda/Degel, and Labor for them to join him instead of a Netanyahu lead Likud-Labor (or Likud-Right) coalition. The price will be so high that he will have to take key seats away from his own party members – and they all know it.

As there is no unifying factor (besides selfish self-aggrandizement) holding Kadima together as an incoherent movement, Netanyahu and Peretz will quietly make offers to the most potentially offended Kadima members in exchange for their support for the position of PM and coalition leader, and these guys will jump at the offer (I don’t believe they can jump parties right after the elections for legal reasons, but they can vote however they want).

Kadima will lose the vote for coalition leader and after the legally alloted time period the rats will return to the parties they abandoned and Kadima will be down to less than the 14 seats they are at today, and then disappear by the time the next election comes around.

Oh, and Marzel will get into the Knesset by the skin of his teeth. But he will get in.