Likud and Netanyahu rising in support; Ben Gvir slipping, TV poll finds

A Channel 12 poll shows Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud rising in popularity, and Netanyahu’s personal standing with the public also going up.

Were elections held today, Likud would win 25 seats in the 120-member Knesset, making it the largest party, followed by Benny Gantz’s National Unity on 21 seats, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid on 15, Avigdor Liberman’s Israel Beytenu on 14 and the Democrats (a Labor-Meretz alliance) on 11. Likud, Channel 12 says, is rising at the expense of Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, which is down to 6 seats in the poll, from 9 in the previous survey.

As regards the Knesset blocs, these are unchanged since the last Channel 12 poll 10 days ago, with the anti-Netanyahu bloc on 66, the pro-Netanyahu bloc on 49, and the Hadash-Ta’al Arab alliance holding the remaining five seats.

Netanyahu is preferred as prime minister by 38-29% over Gantz, and by 38-27% over Lapid, the poll says. But former prime minister Naftali Bennett is preferred to Netanyahu by 38-35%, which does marks an improvement for Netanyahu, since the gap between them was 11% in the last poll.

The poll also shows rising approval for Netanyahu’s handling of the war. Today, 53% say he’s doing a bad job and 43% say he’s doing a good job. Ten days ago, 60% said he was doing a bad job and 35% said he was doing a good job.

The Midgam poll was taken today by phone and over the internet, among 502 representative respondents, with a 4.4% margin of error.

Thus the survey reflects respondents’ views in the wake of the IDF’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut on Friday, but not this evening’s entry of Gideon Sa’ar into Netanyahu’s coalition.

Sa’ar’s New Hope party, in the poll, was shown at 2.4% — below the minimum threshold for getting any Knesset seats.