TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) – Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scored a wide victory in Likud Party primary elections on Monday to run against Ariel Sharon as candidate for prime minister in March elections, and his main opponent conceded defeat.

Exit polls from all three Israeli TV stations showed Netanyahu receiving 47 percent of the vote, while Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom got 32 percent, right-wing extremist Moshe Feiglin 15 percent and Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz 6 percent.

Doctors expect Prime Minister Sharon, 77, to recover fully from a mild stroke and leave the hospital Tuesday.

Initial vote counts, including seven of the 149 voting stations, showed Netanyahu leading Shalom, 43.1 percent to 37.4 percent.

Addressing his supporters, Shalom said he called Netanyahu to congratulate him on his victory and called on him to “sit down and work out a common program so that we can remain a united Likud.”

Netanyahu, a strident hardliner who quit Sharon’s government in protest over his pullout from Gaza and the West Bank in the summer, was expected to lead Likud into the most hawkish camp of the Israeli political spectrum, leaving the center for Sharon’s new party, Kadima. Polls taken before the Likud primary show the party taking a severe beating in the March 28 election.

The exit polls questioned 599 Likud voters and quoted margins of error of 4.5 percent, the TV stations reported.

If the poll results are translated into the actual outcome, Netanyahu would succeed Sharon as head of the Likud Party. Sharon, who helped found the party in the 1970s, quit last month after an internal rebellion against his Gaza pullout.

Newspaper polls show the Likud losing two-thirds of its strength in the March election, dropping from 40 seats to around 12 – a stunning comedown for the party that has dominated Israeli political life since 1977, when it first rose to power.

Sharon’s new party is far ahead in the polls with about 35 seats out of the 120 in the parliament.

The Likud primary fills out a picture of the Israeli political scene that was scrambled by Sharon’s decision to leave Likud four weeks ago. That decision followed the surprise victory by fiery labor union chief Amir Peretz over elder statesman Shimon Peres as Labor Party leader.

Newspaper polls show Labor gaining a few seats from its present 21.