Poll shows Netanyahu’s Likud shellacking rivals

Five weeks after March 9’s deadlocked third election in a year, a poll by Channel 12 news finds that if a fourth round of elections were held today, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud would win 40 seats, far, far ahead of any rival, and the Netanyahu-led bloc would have a Knesset majority.

Benny Gantz’s Blue and White is predicted to get 19 seats, the Joint List 15 and Yesh Atid-Telem (the factions no longer in Blue and White) 10.

Shas gets 9, Yamina 8, United Torah Judaism 7, Yisrael Beytenu 7, and Meretz 5.

That adds up to a right-wing / ultra-Orthodox bloc of 64 MKs in the 120-seat Knesset.

Way at the bottom, with just 1.1 percent of the vote, not nearly enough to get into the Knesset, is the Labor party.

The poll finds 64% of Israelis satisfied with the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, with 33% not satisfied.

Netanyahu, who has until midnight to decide if he wants to try to seal a coalition deal with Gantz, might look at the poll and think a resort to new elections would work well for him, Channel 12’s pundit Amit Segal says. But it’s just a poll, Segal cautions, and a few months from now, if a million Israelis are still unemployed, an election could be playing out in a very different atmosphere.