Poll: Segalovitz joining Ra’am would give 2-seat bump; plurality of opposition voters back party joining gov’t

A new poll from Channel 13 shows that Yesh Atid MK Yoav Segalovitz joining Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am party would boost the Arab-majority party by two seats from five to an unprecedented seven.

Segalovitz has reportedly been in talks with Abbas about a merger, with an announcement expected in the coming days.

The move has the potential of boosting Abbas’s legitimacy as a coalition partner in the eyes of opposition parties, who have been campaigning on not sitting with Arab-majority factions.

Ra’am was part of the coalition during the previous government headed by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, but such steps toward coexistence in Israel have been delegitimized since Hamas’s October 7 attack, which Abbas has repeatedly condemned, while also recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

The Channel 13 survey also shows that a merger between the hardline Arab nationalist party Balad and fellow Arab-majority party Hadash-Ta’al would win eight seats — a better result than if they ran separately, in which case Balad wouldn’t cross the electoral threshold, while Hadash-Ta’al would receive six seats.

Channel 13 also asked respondents whether they would support a Ra’am headed by Abbas and Segalovitz being part of the coalition. Forty-five percent of respondents said no, 29% said yes and 26% were unsure.

But among opposition voters, a plurality of 37% said they’d back such a coalition, while 32% said they wouldn’t and 31% said they weren’t sure.

The poll offered bad news for the various new right-wing parties that are trying to make it into the Knesset. All three of them — one headed by former ministers Yoaz Hendel and Chili Trooper, another headed by former Likud ministers Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein and another headed by Benny Gantz and Dedi Simhi — failed to cross the electoral threshold.

Channel 13 polled 961 people, with a sampling error of 3.7%.