Fifth Election? Last Poll Before Election Shows Blocs in Dead Heat

YERUSHALAYIM
An IDF soldier casts an early vote at an army base near the Arab town of Kafr Qara, on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

Could Israel be headed toward a fifth election? The drama ahead of next week’s election has stepped up a notch, with the left-wing and right-wing blocs tied with a projected 60 seats apiece.

The Yisrael Hayom-i24NEWS poll, conducted by Maagar Hamochot Institute under Professor Yitzchak Katz, used a large sample of 2,087 respondents and had only a 2.1% margin of error.

The results showed that the Likud would win 29 seats, followed by Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid with 18 seats. The poll showed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu having the more stable bloc, but the narrow gap between him and Lapid indicates that there is virtually no possibility that either Naftali Bennett or Gideon Sa’ar will be tapped to form the next government.

The poll projected ten seats each for Bennett’s Yamina, Sa’ar’s New Hope, and the Joint Arab List.

When it comes to how certain respondents were of how they would be voting, Sa’ar’s situation improved, with 59% of those who said he was their preferred candidate saying they would definitely vote for him, compared to 57% of Yamina supporters who said they were certain about how they would be voting.

Shas was projected to win nine seats, followed by Yisrael Beytenu with eight and United Torah Judaism with seven.

Left-wing parties Labor and Meretz were each projected to win five seats, followed by the Religious Zionist Party, also with a projected five seats, and Blue and White with four seats – just skimming the minimum electoral threshold of 3.25%.

Neither Mansour Abbas’ Ra’am Party nor Yaron Zelikha’s party was projected to make it past the minimum threshold.

When asked who was the best candidate to serve as prime minister, 45% picked Netanyahu, and 25% picked Lapid, followed by 13% who said Sa’ar, 12% who said Bennett, and only 5% who picked Gantz.

To Read The Full Story

Are you already a subscriber?
Click to log in!