Netanyahu bloc drops 4 seats in weekly TV poll as another unaligned party forecast to enter Knesset

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc of right-wing factions falls by four seats in Channel 13’s weekly poll, as the non-aligned party led by former minister Yoaz Hendel and economist Yaron Zelekha is forecast to squeeze past the minimum vote threshold.

Together, Netanyahu’s Likud and its allies have 51 seats in the survey, versus 50 for the opposition bloc led by former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot, both well short of the 61 seats needed for a Knesset majority. Parties unaffiliated with neither bloc — the predominantly-Arab Joint List, Islamist Ra’am and the Hendel-Zelekha alliance — pick up the remaining 19 seats, some 15% of the total in the 120-seat Knesset.

Eisenkot’s Yashar party is the largest in the poll with 20 seats, followed by Likud at 18, B’Yachad 12, Yisrael Beytenu nine, Democrats nine, Joint List nine, Otzma Yehudit eight, United Torah Judaism eight, Shas seven, Religious Zionism six, Ra’am six, People of Israel four and Hendel-Zelekha four.

The survey, which was conducted by Madad pollsters Shmuel Rosner and Noah Slepkov, included 1,018 respondents, with a 3.1% margin of error.