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There was a moment late Tuesday, during her campaign to lead the next Israeli government, that Tzipi Livni actually seemed to be enjoying herself.

It came just before midnight at a wild party for young voters in one of Tel Aviv's hottest clubs, as the 50-year-old Foreign Minister and leader of Israel's Kadima party shimmied across the stage, put on the DJ's headphones and raised her arms in unadulterated joy.

Most of that day, just a week before Tuesday's election, had not been so enjoyable. At 7:15, a gaggle of young Labour party activists showed up with a rooster outside Ms. Livni's home. "Wake up Livni: Lieberman is a racist," they chanted in reference to Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the Yisrael Beitenu party, whose anti-Arab policies have earned criticism, but whose growing popularity might still put him in a Livni coalition government.

Ms. Livni may be campaigning to be Israel's first woman prime minister since Golda Meir, but in the afternoon she had received a listless response to her address to a conference of municipal government accountants and, in the early evening, she saw a large number of people walk out as she spoke at her own campaign headquarters in Jerusalem (most were people who had come only to get their paid election-day assignments).

The highlight of the grinding day had been when a couple of relatively unknown former generals pledged their support for her campaign.

But, back on her home turf in Tel Aviv, a quick change from a grey suit to tight blue jeans, white T-shirt and denim jacket and she was refreshed enough to stride onto the stage at Haoman 17, full of confidence and with an itch to dance.

It is hard to imagine either of her main political rivals — the self-conscious Likud Leader Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom she is neck and neck in the election race, or the taciturn Labour Defence Minister Ehud Barak — making the same scene.

For once, Ms. Livni left behind her earnest stump speech that calls for a change to the way politics is carried out. She simply dedicated a popular song to "the young people here who will change the country." The crowd loved it and seemed to love her.

"She's a great dancer," one of her workers enthused.

Indeed, dancing appears to have been one of the few bright spots in the life of the young Tzippora (Hebrew for "bird"), the last of three children in the austere home of Sara and Eitan Livni, Polish immigrants and former leaders in the right-wing underground Irgun movement.

Her father, who had been imprisoned by the British in 1946 for sabotaging a railway line and later escaped from prison, served as a member of the Knesset in the Herut party of prime minister Menachem Begin. Her mother ran a Spartan household and was not given to outward displays of affection.

"My mother believed that life in Israel would prove difficult and it was her goal to raise strong children," Ms. Livni recently told an Israeli woman's magazine. "I felt loved, even without a lot of kissing and hugging."

After completing her military service, Ms. Livni was recruited by the Mossad while at law school. She acknowledges only that she stayed with the spy agency for four years, training as an agent as she studied and then spending several months posted in Paris. Israeli reports say she mostly ran a safe house in the French capital, at a time when Israeli agents were seeking out Palestinian and other enemies. She left the agency abruptly, reports say, to marry and to open her own real-estate law firm.

Ms. Livni's politics in those years were strictly Likud: She believed in the right of the Jewish state to the whole of the biblical land of Israel and in the right to safeguard that land by force. She kept, and still keeps, a kosher home and observes Jewish holy days.

It was with that attitude that she decided to plunge into politics in 1995, just three weeks before the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and just when much of the country was agreeing that giving up the West Bank and Gaza was a reasonable price to pay for peace with the Palestinians. Ms. Livni wasn't so sure.

She said she felt connected to that historic land, but recognized the enthusiasm for peace. "I realized that love of the land was not going to help us avoid the need to divide it," she told an interviewer last year when she sought and won the Likud leadership. "I felt that I needed to do something, precisely because I had an ear for both sides."

Ms. Livni's political evolution continued as she served in the cabinets of prime minister Ariel Sharon, first in Likud, then following Mr. Sharon as he split from the party and formed Kadima. By 2005, she was arguing in favour of Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and in favour of a Palestinian state so that Israel could remain a Jewish state and still be democratic.

Her message in this campaign is a sober one: There is too much bureaucracy — and too much corruption — in the Israeli government, and she's the one to change things.

It's a message that fell flat with the municipal accountants, a predominantly male group who are part of the system she denounces, but it fares a little better with university students and best with voters who are tired of years of scandal.

One columnist noted this week that if it had not been for the war in Gaza, everyone would be talking about government reform.

Everyone may not be talking about it, but Tzipi Livni certainly is. "I'm completely goal-oriented," she told an interviewer last year. "I know what I want to say, believe in my ability to win, and I won't forgive myself if I don't." She was referring then to her leadership bid, but it can also be said of her determination in this election campaign, during which she has covered twice as many kilometres and made many times more speeches than her two principal rivals.

Hard-working, yes, but critics say Ms. Livni has a short fuse and lacks charm. Certainly, her straight-ahead style in delivering her message displays little in the way of levity or emotion. Her supporters, nonetheless, feel the love.

"She's different" is the most frequent reason given for supporting Ms. Livni. "Honest" is the next most frequent. Some say they trust her "middle-of-the-road" positions.

All comment on her being "an impressive woman," but only one supporter, a 24-year-old man, said he was backing her because she is a woman.

A 23-year-old woman at Ms. Livni's nightclub event described her as "full of life." She also said that if Ms. Livni were not running, she would vote for Mr. Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party.

Ms. Livni and Mr. Lieberman? In the same breath?

Ms. Livni has done the math. Even if she manages to finish ahead of Mr. Netanyahu, she will need the support of more than just the centrist Labour party and left-wing Meretz, with their expected 15 and five seats, to form a coalition government. She will have to reach out to Mr. Lieberman's party, which is expected to take as many as 19 seats.

Many may hold it against her, but Ms. Livni believes that she can work with a man who, in many ways, shares her secular Jewish and democratic values. Both want a law to allow civil marriage in Israel and both want less religious influence in areas such as education and housing.

And while Mr. Lieberman's approach to Arab Israelis is to insist that each one swears an oath of allegiance, Ms. Livni does allow that, for the Arab Israeli population, "any expression of [Arab] nationalism must be confined to the Palestinian state."

When it comes to peace, both also are prepared to concede land to a Palestinian state and even to share and divide jurisdiction over Jerusalem in some creative way.

Tzipi Livni has come a long way from the course her parents laid out for her. "I'm doing this for my children, not my parents," she says.

"[Israeli politician and diplomat] Abba Eban once said that the Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity," Ms. Livni said this week, "and I'm not prepared for them to say that about us.

"Peace is not a threat, but rather an Israeli interest, and that is our opportunity."