With exactly two weeks to go until Election Day, a poll released on Tuesday showed that the Likud and Yesh Atid parties enjoyed a boost in support as Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope plummeted to less than 10 seats in the Knesset for the first time.
The political stalemate should continue without any bloc gaining a majority in the next Knesset, in line with other recent polls.
According to the poll released by Channel 13 news, if the election were held today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party would win the largest number of seats in the Knesset, with 29, followed by the center-left Yesh Atid faction of Yair Lapid, with 20 seats in the 120 Knesset seats.
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Next, with 11 seats, was the Yamina party led by Naftali Bennett, overtaking the right-wing rival New Hope, which fell to just 9 seats.
The Joint List had 8 chairs; United Torah Judaism and Yisrael Betyenu 7 each; Shas e Trabalho, 6 each; the party of religious Zionism, 5; and Blue and White, Meretz and Ra’am were all expected to win 4 seats, just above the electoral threshold for entry to the Knesset.
According to these results, neither pro or anti-Netanyahu camps would have a clear path to forming a majority coalition.
Party leaders before the 2021 elections (from left): Yair Lapid, Naftali Bennett, Benjamin Netanyahu, Gideon Sa’ar, Benny Gantz (courtesy)
Overall, the survey predicted that Netanyahu and his religious allies won 47 seats, far short of the majority of 61 seats needed to form a government.
If both the Islamic party Ra’am and Yamina supported Netanyahu, that would win the majority for the prime minister with 62 seats, according to the survey. But it would also force him to base his coalition on the support of a non-Zionist Arab party – a move that he has repeatedly attacked his rivals for allegedly persecuting, and which would probably not go down well with some of his far-right partners.
Netanyahu said on Tuesday in an interview with Army Radio that he would not sit in a coalition with Ra’am.
Meanwhile, in the survey, the anti-Netanyahu camp had 58 seats.
Assuming that the Joint List of Arab majority is left out of any coalition, that the bloc’s constituent parties are able to cover up their main ideological differences and that Yamina participates, she could form a coalition of 61, placing Bennett as a potential kingmaker.
Asked if there was a chance that they would change their mind before election day, 75% of those who voted for the pro-Netanyahu parties said no and only 25% said yes, while the numbers were the opposite for those who said they would vote for the parties that swore not to join Netanyahu: 75% said yes and 25% said no.
The survey, which was conducted by well-known Israeli researcher Kamil Fuchs and interviewed 712 respondents, with a 3.6% margin of error, also asked who voters think should have a chance to form a government if Netanyahu does not receive support from majority.
For this question, Lapid received 26%, Bennett evaluated 23% and Sa’ar 20%. Eighteen percent of respondents said they did not know.
After the election, the president decides which candidate will be tasked with building the coalition, based on the recommendations of all political parties.
Jewish Home President Naftali Bennett (L) speaks with Yesh Atid President Yair Lapid at the Knesset plenary, March 11, 2014. (Miriam Alster / Flash90)
According to a Channel 12 report late on Tuesday, Bennett and Sa’ar, who have refrained from attacking each other in recent weeks, must renew political pressure on each other with harsh campaigns designed to divert voters from to each other.
While horse racing polls are an almost daily occurrence in Israel in the weeks leading up to the elections and are not seen as overly reliable, the polls together can serve as a general indicator of the political climate and where the vote may be headed.
Previous polls generally predicted a political stalemate after the election, with no party having a clear path to forming a majority coalition.
The next elections – the fourth in two years – were called after the power-sharing government Likud and Blue and White failed to agree on a budget until the December 23 deadline.
The election, like the previous three votes, is widely seen as a referendum on the Netanyahu government in the midst of the ongoing trial on corruption charges, as well as how his government handled the COVID-19 pandemic.
