From the Liveblog of
Thursday, April 16, 2026
Polls show coalition remains far below votes needed for Knesset majority
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc continues to fall far short of the electoral support necessary to form a coalition after the next election, according to several opinion polls released this evening.
According to Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site, if elections were held today, Netanyahu’s Likud would receive 28 of 120 Knesset seats, followed by Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar! and former prime minister Naftali Bennett’s Bennett 2026 party, with 16 each. Yisrael Beytenu would garner 10 seats, followed by Shas and The Democrats with 9 each, United Torah Judaism with 8, Otzma Yehudit with 6, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid and the Islamist Ra’am with 5 each and Hadash-Ta’al and Blue and White each with 4.
The poll has the current coalition at 51 seats in total, while the Zionist opposition would receive 60 and the Arab parties 9. Neither side would be able to form a government without the support of the Arabs.
If Eisenkot, Lapid and Bennett ran together, their combined list would receive 38 seats, making it the largest faction in the Knesset, but it would not significantly change the size of the blocs, the poll finds.
According to a separate poll by the Israel Hayom daily, Likud dropped from 28 in a previous poll to 26 seats, while the coalition went from 53 to 52, a drop the paper linked to public anger over the current ceasefire with Iran. Bennett received 20 seats, followed by Eisenkot at 14, Otzma Yehudit at 10, Shas and The Democrats at 9, Yisrael Beytenu at 8, United Torah Judaism at 7, and Yesh Atid, Hadash-Ta’al and Ra’am at 6.
Meanwhile, a Channel 12 survey finds Likud at 25, Bennett at 20 and Eisenkot at 14. Benny Gantz’s Blue and White fails to cross the electoral threshold. Per Channel 12’s poll, the coalition would get 51 seats while the opposition would garner 69, but 59 without the Arab parties.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party fails to cross the electoral threshold in any of the polls.
The Times of Israel Community.