Election poll shows Likud remains the largest party but pro-Netanyahu bloc would be 10 seats short of majority

By Tal Schneider

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and ToI Staff 21 May 2026, 10:55 am

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If elections were to be held today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud would be the largest party with 24 seats out of a possible 120, according to a new electoral poll by The Times of Israel’s sister site, Zman Yisrael.

The joint “Together” slate headed by former prime minister Naftali Bennett and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid trails close behind in the poll with 23 seats.

In a trend continuing from the previous week, the Zman Yisrael poll finds Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party would pass the electoral threshold, with the minimum four seats required for a party to enter the Knesset.

A poll conducted by the Maariv newspaper also finds that Religious Zionism would pass the electoral threshold.

The Zman Yisrael poll finds that the remaining 73 Knesset seats would be distributed between parties as follows: 16 seats for Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar; nine for ultra-Orthodox Shas; nine for Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu; eight for the left-wing Democrats; eight for ultra-Orthodox United Judaism; six for far-right Otzma Yehudit; five for Islamist Ra’am; four for Arab-majority Hadash Ta’al; four for Religious Zionism; and four for Benny Gantz’s Blue and White.

This would leave the pro-Netanyahu bloc with 51 seats and the anti-Netanyahu Zionist bloc — meaning excluding the Arab parties as several parties have ruled out the possibility of sitting in government with them — with 56 seats, both of them short of the minimum 61 seats needed to form a coalition.

Separately, the poll finds that 43% of Israelis don’t have a preference when it comes to whether the elections will be held in September or October.

Of those who do prefer one option over another, 24% say they would prefer elections on September 1, while 20% favor October 27, and 14% favor September 15.

The poll was conducted on May 19 and 20, and includes responses from 500 Jewish and Arab participants. It has a margin of error of 4.4%.