Poll: After Unity, No Change on Right or Left

With single, unified parties on both the right and left, polls indicate that neither the Likud nor Blue and White will be able to break the electoral deadlock between right and left. A weekend poll by radio station 103FM shows that neither major party will be able to form a coalition, unless MKs from either bloc move to their rival.

Blue and White gets the most Knesset seats, with 34, compared to 30 for the Likud, ostensibly giving Benny Gantz first crack at forming a government. For that, though, he will need more than the 10 seats that the combination of Gesher and Meretz party will yield him. The United Arab List, which Gantz may turn to for support, would get 14 seats if elections were held today.

That would give Gantz 58 seats, three shy of what he would need to form a government – assuming all the MKs in his list, such as right-wing MKs Zvi Hauser and Yoaz Hendel, agree to vote for a government that is essentially beholden to the UAL. Gantz would still need three seats, which he would have to get from either Likud defectors, or one of the chareidi parties – or from Yisrael Beytenu, which in the last election made clear that it would not join a government supported by the UAL. Avigdor Liberman’s party gets 8 seats in the poll.

On the right, the bloc assembled by Binyamin Netanyahu remains stable, and assuming it holds after election day, would prevent Gantz from easily forming a government. The new Yemina party, made up of the New Right and Jewish Home, gets 9 seats in the poll. Shas gets 8 and United Torah Judaism with 7. All together the Likud can count on 54 seats for the right-wing and religious parties.

Speaking in an interview Motzoei Shabbos, Liberman told Channel 13 that “there will be no fourth election. You can believe me on this. Everything is already wrapped up.”