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Thursday, March 12, 2026
Poll: Smotrich’s party passes electoral threshold for first time in months, strengthening pro-Netanyahu bloc
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleFinance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party passes the electoral threshold for the first time since January with four seats, according to a new poll by The Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site, Zman Yisrael.
At the same time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud falls to 29 seats, from 31 last week, after the start of Israel’s war with Iran.
Despite this, the coalition bloc appears to have strengthened slightly, rising from 53 seats last week to 54, in part due to Religious Zionism passing the threshold, but also because Benny Gantz’s Blue and White fails to do so.
In the opposition bloc, former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party continues to gain ground, rising to 15 seats, up from 12 two weeks ago and from 9 three weeks ago.
That bloc also sees an increase from 53 to 56 seats, not including the four Arab parties that signed an agreement in January to work toward running together on a joint list and remain projected to win 10 seats if they end up running separately.
The poll was conducted on March 11-12, 2026, among 500 respondents, controlled by age, religion, gender and place of residence. The margin of error is 4.4%.
The Times of Israel Community.