Two polls released Thursday night by Kan 11 and News 13, point to a rapid decline in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party’s parliamentary power, and a corresponding meteoric rise to Opposition Chairman Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid and Yamina Chairman Naftali Bennett. Naturally, polls are not necessarily an accurate prediction of election results, but they are snapshots, and as snapshots go, this one is hideous as far as the country’s biggest party goes.
The results of Thursday’s News 13 poll suggest that if the election had taken place today, the Likud would have become significantly weaker, receiving only 29 seats, compared to the 36 it won in the March elections and the 40 seats it got in polls only a month ago.
Blue&White continues to crash, receiving only eight seats. In contrast, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid grows to 19 seats, as does Naftali Bennett’s Yamina – also with 19 seats, a meteoric, 13-seat rise from its current 6 seats.
The next biggest party is the Joint Arab List, which keeps the 15 seats it won the previous election. Shas gets eight seats, as does Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, which goes up 1 from 7. United Torah Judaism and Meretz get 7 seats each.
An absolute majority of respondents, 71%, think that the Israeli government is not managing the economic crisis well. 59% are dissatisfied with the way Prime Minister Netanyahu manages the Corona crisis, 22% are quite satisfied, and only 13% are really satisfied.
And yet, despite these responses and their dissatisfaction with the PM’s handling of the double crisis, and the sharp decline in Likud seats, when asked who is most suitable to be the next prime minister, 51% think Netanyahu is the man. Only 45% thought he shouldn’t get the job. Only 4% didn’t know, but for Israel, this many citizens who admit they don’t know something is huge…
As for Benny Gantz, only 31% believe he is suitable for the PM’s job, while 63% think he is not. As to opposition leader Yair Lapid, only 28% of respondents find him suitable to be the next prime minister, 65% said he isn’t. For some reason the pollsters did not ask about Naftali Bennett, who has been giving Netanyahu a run for his money since moving his stuff to the opposition benches.
The survey was conducted by Professor Camil Fuchs and included 704 respondents, of whom 604 were from the Jewish population and 100 from the non-Jewish sector. The sampling error is +-3.9%.
A second poll published Thursday night, by Kan 11, shows that if the election were held today, the Likud would lose 6 seats and slip to 30.
The second largest party according to this poll is Yesh Atid, with 17 seats. The Joint Arab List grows to 16 seats. Yamina wins 15 seats, Blue&White drops to 12, followed by Shas with 9 seats and United Torah Judaism with 8. Yisrael Beiteinu gets 7 seats and Meretz shrinks down to 6.
In response to the question who is most suitable to be the next prime minister of Israel, 37% picked Netanyahu. 19% supported Yamina chairman Naftali Bennett, and 15% picked Yair Lapid. Only 10% of respondents chose Benny Ganz.
The survey was conducted by the Kantar Institute among 599 respondents in a national sample of the population aged 18 and over. The number of people asked to answer the survey is 2,335 people and the sampling error is +-4.4%.