One wild card: While Mr. Brown has no major opponent in his party now, that could change if U.S. Sen.
Many Jewish Americans who feel Peres has been too conciliatory with Israel's enemies, are supporting his opponent, Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who takes a harder line on security issues.
Senator Clinton, like her opponent in the Democratic Party, Senator Barack Obama opposes the free-trade agreement.
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Its chief opponent, the Labour Party, has a commanding lead in the opinion polls and Labour's leader, Helen Clark, sounds each day more like a prime minister in waiting.
Mitch McConnell, the GOP's leader in the U.S. Senate, was campaigning for the opponent of tea-party candidate Rand Paul in the senate contest in his home state, aided by party stalwart Dick Cheney.
All this comes at a time when the Progress Party, until recently the most right-wing party in parliament, has just readmitted Mogens Glistrup, the vociferous and extreme opponent of immigration who helped found the party.
Her main parliamentary opponent, the United National Party, had refused to give her the necessary votes thus far.
Yet Blackwell has had to try to escape the stigma of his party, as his opponent unfairly but effectively ties him to the discredited Governor Taft.
While Obama occupies the middle, his GOP opponent must closely follow the Tea Party line (as well as that of social conservatives) and risk being marginalized to the extreme.
Mr Swinney won a convincing victory against leadership opponent Alex Neil last month at the party's annual conference in Inverness.
This year, the field appears likely to narrow more quickly, helping an opponent roll up social conservatives, tea-party backers and ideological purists, who might otherwise have been more fractured.
Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, who staked his future as a campaign-finance crusader on a refusal to accept soft money, defeated an opponent flush with dollars from the national Republican Party.
If, as expected, a third opponent of the bill, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the pro-dalit ruler of northern Uttar Pradesh state, also forsakes the government, it would be reduced to a majority of two in the Lok Sabha.
David Bonior, the bill's leading Democratic opponent, says that two-thirds of his party will oppose it, 40 more than opposed the annual renewal of the China trade bill last year.
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Furthermore, like many successful strongmen, he has the common touch, which allows him to connect with ordinary Cambodians in a way that his principal opponent, Sam Rainsy of the eponymous Sam Rainsy Party, has struggled to equal.
The challenge for McCain and for his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama is to keep the party's political core intact, while also reaching out to the voters independents, undecided and others in the middle.
Long-term opponent councillor Mark Howell, from the Poole People's Party, hopes the report will pave the way for desperately needed changes.
The other is the Telegu Desam Party, which rules Andhra Pradesh and whose main opponent in the state's assembly election next year will be Congress.
Opponent Mary Disborough, a 71-year-old tea-party supporter from Indiana, pushed her wheelchair around the sidewalk in front of the court building, starting conversations with people on both sides of the issue.
Others in this powerful clan include Hamid al-Ahmar, a leader of the Islamist party Islah and a prominent businessman who has long been an opponent of the president.
But his own ruling party would still, in effect, be able to block an opponent.
After his opponent's victory, Mr Fillon warned of a deepening split in the party which he described as a "political and moral fracture".
The ruling centre-right Popular Party of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar -- a staunch opponent of Basque self-determination -- emerged as the region's second political force thanks to its alliance with the smaller conservative party.
Nonetheless, he is one of the party's greatest advocates of a strong separate identity and is an opponent of links with Labour.
And he will -- he looks forward to the time when the other party has chosen its nominee to engage in that debate directly with his opponent.
Gauck is an independent political thinker from the former east who was a strong opponent of the communist government, and who was nominated by the left-leaning SPD party in 2010 to run for president of Germany.
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Further, it would reward a party for win-at-all-costs tactics, to the deprivation of his opponent.
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The most vocal opponent of the security deal in Iraq has been radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's party, which opposes any U.S. military presence in Iraq.
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Here is where third-party voices are important, because others can create and sustain powerful negative messages against the opponent while keeping the candidate and his persona (or in the war effort, the United States or the president and top leaders) above the unseemliness of it all.
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Whitman could well face a conservative primary opponent, but her money and strength in the state GOP make her an overwhelming favorite to win her party's Senate nomination.
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