Netanyahu’s coalition still projected to fall short of majority in future elections

Continuing a trend seen in recent surveys, opinion polls published this evening by two major news outlets show that parties in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition would fail to win a majority were elections to be held today.

These parties — Netanyahu’s Likud, along with the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism, and the far-right Religion Zionism and Otzma Yehudit — would together capture 54 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, down from 64 today.

According to the polls, published in the evening newscasts of Channels 11 and 12, opposition parties could assemble a 61-seat coalition without having to rely on the votes of the Hadash-Ta’al party.

The two largest projected parties, Likud and Benny Gantz’s National Unity, continued to trade blows in the latest polls, with the former projected to be the largest in the Channel 12 poll (28 seats), while Channel 11 said National Unity would win a plurality with 29.

While Israeli television polls are notoriously unreliable, they often affect public opinion and drive decision-making among parties.