Poll Shows Likud, Right Closing in on 60 Seats

The Likud and the right continue to show forward momentum in one of the last polls that will be released before next Monday’s elections. The poll by the Direct Plus organization shows the rightwing bloc backing Binyamin Netanyahu reaching 59 Knesset seats, with the chareidi parties strengthening as well.

The Likud led by Netanyahu, according to the poll, would get 35 seats if elections were held today, with Blue and White falling to 33 seats. Until last week, polls had consistently showed Blue and White getting 35 seats, with the Likud getting 33 or 34.

The United Arab List, with 13 seats, would remain the third largest party in the Knesset. Next in size comes Shas, with nine seats, the same number that would go to Labor-Meretz-Gesher. United Torah Judaism would get eight, Yamina seven, and Yisrael Beytenu six. Some of the new rightwing bloc votes appear to be coming from supporters of Otzma Yehudit; according to the poll, that party would get less than 1% of the vote, with earlier polls showing it getting in excess of 2%, but never crossing the 3.25% electoral threshold.

The poll also showed that the number of undecided voters had shrunk dramatically in recent days. The last poll taken by Direct Plus last week showed that 10% of the electorate had not made up its mind; the current poll shows that that figure has shrunk to 2.6%.

Although his numbers have been falling in recent polls, Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman is still convinced that he will be able to form a government without the United Arab List – and without chareidi parties. “We are not waiting until after the election to do this,” Liberman told Kan News Thursday. “We are working on this right now, and things are already sewn up.”

As in the past, Liberman refused to answer the mathematical equation set before him: If the rightwing bloc remains loyal to Netanyahu, as it again proclaimed this week, and he excludes the UAL, where will Blue and White head Benny Gantz get 61 Knesset seats to form a government? When asked the question, Liberman responded by saying that listeners “should not worry, Israel will emerge from this with a secular, liberal government. There will not be fourth elections.”