Poll: On back of hostage deal success, Netanyahu’s Likud would win 34 seats if elections held today; his bloc would be near Knesset majority

By Tal Schneider

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and ToI Staff 16 October 2025, 5:51 pm

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Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu addresses supporters at the party's campaign headquarters in Jerusalem early on November 2, 2022, with his wife Sara at his side, as votes are counted in the general elections. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

If elections were held today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party would win 34 seats, according to a poll conducted by Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site, marking a dramatic increase in support for the premier following the release of the living hostages and the ceasefire in Gaza.

This is the best result that Likud has received in any election poll since the Hamas assault of October 7, 2023, and the outbreak of war in Gaza.

In contrast, the new party of former prime minister Naftali Bennett, seen as Netanyahu’s main rival in the next elections, would receive just 20 seats if elections were held today.

The boost to Likud’s numbers means that the parties belonging to the coalition would receive 59 seats in a new round of elections — just one short of the 60-seat majority required to form a government.

The Zionist anti-Netanyahu bloc, led by Bennett, would receive 53 seats, far short of a Knesset majority. The Arab-majority Hadash-Ta’al and Islamist Ra’am parties would receive eight seats in total.

Several parties are hovering around the 4-seat mark, meaning just above the 3.25% electoral threshold, putting them at risk of slipping below it and missing out on entering the Knesset altogether, the Zman Yisrael poll shows.

The third-largest party in the Knesset after Likud and Bennett 2026 would be Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu, with 10 seats. After him would be the ultra-Orthodox Shas party with nine seats, and fellow Haredi party United Torah Judaism with seven.

Yair Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid party and Yair Golan’s left-wing Democrats would receive seven seats each, while Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar! and Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit would each win five spots.

Heading up the rear are Ra’am, Hadash-Ta’al, Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism, and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White, each with four seats.

Neither Yoaz Hendel’s HaMiluimnikim (The Reservists) party nor Palestinian nationalist party Balad would pass the electoral threshold.

The poll was conducted yesterday and today, among a representative sample of 404 respondents, with a 4.8% margin of error.