From the Liveblog of
Friday, May 3, 2024
Poll: Gantz boosts lead over Netanyahu again as Israel waits on hostage deal, Rafah operation
National Unity chair Benny Gantz is holding and even slightly strengthening his lead over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a new poll taken as Israel waits for Hamas’s answer to the latest offer for a hostage and truce deal and amid a looming Israel Defense Forces operation in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah.
If elections were held today, Gantz’s National Unity party would get 31 seats — up two from last week’s survey and significantly higher than its current 12 seats, the Maariv poll finds.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party is down two seats to 19 in this week’s poll, higher than earlier in the war against Hamas in Gaza but still much lower than the 32 Knesset seats it currently holds.
The Maariv poll also shows the gap between the two leaders widening in the past week; 47 percent prefer Gantz as prime minister while 33% believe Netanyahu is more suitable to lead the country. The gap widened from 9% last week to 14% this week, Maariv notes.
The poll finds that the split between camps has widened slightly over the past week, with the right-wing bloc staying stable at 50 mandates and the opposition gaining 4 seats to a total of 65, with five seats to Arab parties, in the 120-member Knesset.
According to the poll (current number of seats in parentheses), Opposition Leader Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party would get 13 seats (24), hawkish MK Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu (6) would strengthen to 12 seats, Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit (7) would rise to 10 seats, Shas (11) would drop to 9 seats, United Torah Judaism would stay stable at 7, Hadash-Taal and Ra’am would remain stable at 5 each, Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism (4) would get 5 seats and Meretz (0) would just pass the electoral threshold to get 4 seats.
The Arab Balad party, the center-left Labor party and Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope would fall below the threshold to enter the Knesset.
The poll was conducted on May 1-2 by Panel4All and sampled 500 people over the age of 18 with a margin error of 4.4%.
