Neither Gabbay nor Peretz would drag Labor out of third place, polls say

As the Labor Party heads toward the second round of its leadership race on Monday, polls suggest both candidates still in the running, Amir Peretz and Avi Gabbay, would deliver similar showings at the polls — and leave Labor trailing in third place behind the ruling Likud and centrist Yesh Atid.

According to a poll conducted Wednesday for the Walla news site, Labor would win 18 seats in an election conducted this week under either leader, behind both Yesh Atid (23 seats in both polls) and Likud (22 seats against Gabbay and 21 against Peretz).

Yesh Atid’s small lead over Likud reflects other recent polls that have shown the centrist faction usually trailing, but occasionally passing, the ruling party of Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Walla poll was relatively favorable to Labor, at least compared to a poll also conducted Wednesday for Channel 2, which showed Labor at a more modest 14 seats with Gabbay and 15 with Peretz.

The Channel 2 poll saw Likud soar to a comfortable lead over Yesh Atid, with 28 to 21 (in the Gabbay poll) and an even steeper 29 to 20 (in the Peretz one).

The Walla poll was carried out by pollster Prof. Camil Fuchs, who interviewed 597 respondents, including 100 from the Arab community. The Channel 2 poll was conducted by the Midgam Institute, which interviewed a representative sample of 500 Israeli adults.

The similar showings for Peretz and Gabbay suggest that polls alone will not have too much influence on the final showdown for Labor leader slated for Monday.

It was Labor’s poor poll showing in recent weeks that may have helped doom the reelection bid of incumbent Isaac Herzog, who came in third place in Tuesday’s primary with 17 percent of the vote. Peretz came in first with 33% and Gabbay second with 27%. Some 31,000 Labor members voted in the race, a 59% turnout.

Herzog currently leads the 24-seat Zionist Union faction in the Knesset, an alliance of Labor and Hatnua. In the March 2015 election, when the two parties ran in a joint list, 19 Labor members and five Hatnua ones were elected on the list. Peretz, a former head of the Labor party, was elected to the current Knesset on the Hatnua list, but switched to Labor last year, in preparation for his run for party leader.

All the polls offered good news for Kulanu’s leader, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, who heads an 11-seat faction in the current Knesset, but has been polling at a desultory six or seven seats for several months. The Walla poll showed Kulanu at 9 seats against Gabbay and 10 seats against Peretz, while Channel 2 gave it 11 against Gabbay and 10 against Peretz.

The Arab Joint List took 13 seats in both scenarios in both polls. Jewish Home won 11 seats in Walla’s polls and 9 in Channel 2’s. Yisrael Beytenu took 5 and 7, Meretz 5 and 6, United Torah Judaism 6 and 7, and Shas 5 and 7.