Thursday’s election polls’ average gives Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc a solid, 60-vote coalition, which is not enough to pass legislation but would be enough to withstand a vote of no confidence. His opponent, be it Yair Lapid or Benny Gantz, only has 51 mandates without Ra’am and the Joint Arab List, and 60 with them. But it remains to be seen whether left-of-center coalition partners such as Avigdor Liberman or Gideon Sa’ar would accept the likes of Ahmad Tibi or Ayman Odeh on their résumé.
Here are all the latest results, which point to Netanyahu’s edging up from what used to be a steady 58 to 59 mandates in earlier polls to at least 60 across the board today. The first two are almost copies of each other:
Kan 11 Newsw
Right bloc: Likud 33, Religious Zionism 12, Shas 8, United Torah Judaism 7 = 60
Left bloc: Yesh Atid 24, National Camp 12, Labor 6, Meretz 5, Israeli Beiteinu 5 = 52
Left bloc with Ra’am 4 = 56; with Joint Arab List 4 = 60
News 12
Right bloc: Likud 34, Religious Zionism 11, Shas 8, United Torah Judaism 7 = 60
Left bloc: Yesh Atid 23, National Camp 12, Labor 5, Meretz 5, Israeli Beiteinu 6 = 51
Left bloc with Ra’am 5 = 56; with Joint Arab List 4 = 60
Next, comes a poll showing serious improvement for the right, at Likud’s expense.
News 13
Right bloc: Likud 32, Religious Zionism 14, Shas 8, United Torah Judaism 7 = 61
Left bloc: Yesh Atid 25, National Camp 11, Labor 5, Meretz 5, Israeli Beiteinu 5 = 51
Left bloc with Ra’am 4 = 55; with Joint Arab List 4 = 59
Finally, Channel 14 predicts an even better result for Netanyahu’s camp, however, because it is politically identified strongly and unabashedly with the right, it’s not taken as seriously by political analysts. Never mind that channels 11, 12, and 13 often feature extremely biased, left-leaning views. With that in mind:
News 14
Right bloc: Likud 34, Religious Zionism 12, Shas 9, United Torah Judaism 7 = 62
Left bloc: Yesh Atid 23, National Camp 13, Labor 4, Meretz 4, Israeli Beiteinu 6 = 50
Left bloc with Ra’am 4 = 54; with Joint Arab List 4 = 58
The next polls will reflect voters’ reaction to Prime Minister Lapid’s declaration of support for the two-state solution at the UN General Assembly on Thursday (Lapid Promotes Palestinian State, Peace, and Stopping Iran in UN General Assembly Speech). If the PM was right, and a majority of Israeli Jews support the 2-states, then he and the rest of his bloc should pull ahead. I suspect that since the opposite is true, the Netanyahu bloc could inch up to 62.
