From the Liveblog of
Thursday, July 16, 2026
ToI poll shows continued deadlock; 61% of public want Haredi draft-related laws annulled
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A new poll by Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site, again shows a deadlock between the pro- and anti-Netanyahu blocs had elections been held today.
Similarly to previous Zman surveys, the new poll has Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party as the largest, with 23 Knesset seats. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud follows with 21, while Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid’s Together gets 15.
Yisrael Beytenu gets 10 seats, Shas 9, United Torah Judaism and The Democrats 8 each, Otzma Yehudit 7, a Hadash-Ta’al-Balad merger 6, Religious Zionism 5, while Ra’am and Benny Gantz’s and Dedy Simhi’s new centrist party getting 4 each.
Yoaz Hendel’s and Chili Tropper’s other new centrist party fails to pass the 3.25% electoral threshold, getting 2.4%.
The anti-Netanyahu bloc gets 56 seats in the 120-member parliament, while the pro-Netanyahu bloc gets 50. The Arab parties get a combined 10, while the remaining four seats belong to Gantz and Simhi, who could partner with either side though this wouldn’t muster a majority coalition.
The survey also asks whether the next Knesset should annul two controversial ultra-Orthodox-pushed laws passed this week, one enshrining Torah study as a basic value of the state and another halting the arrests of Haredi draft dodgers — both part of an attempt to continue decades of sweeping military exemptions for the community, which the High Court has said no longer have a legal basis.
The poll shows 61% of respondents say the laws should be nixed, 23% say they shouldn’t, and 16% don’t know.
The poll was conducted by political consultant Yossi Tatika of Tatika Research & Media in collaboration with the Adgenda panel managed by Roy Schindler. It was conducted on July 15 and 16 and included 500 Jewish and Arab respondents. The maximum margin of sampling error is 4.4%.
The Times of Israel Community.