Netanyahu’s coalition and rival ‘change bloc’ draw level in latest ToI poll

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and the Zionist opposition bloc would each get 53 of the Knesset’s 120 seats if the elections were held today, leaving both short of a government if they fail to rely on defectors or on Arab support, according to a poll published Thursday by The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister site, Zman Yisrael.

As infighting wracks the Zionist anti-Netanyahu parties, the poll also showed 67 percent of respondents who support the so-called “change bloc” want its four leaders — Naftali Bennett, Gadi Eisenkot, Yair Golan, and Avigdor Liberman — to rally behind a single candidate for prime minister ahead of the October 27 election.

Meanwhile, a Channel 13 poll Wednesday had the “change bloc” leading Netanyahu’s bloc 52-51, after Netanyahu’s bloc narrowly came out ahead, for the first time in months, in last week’s Channel 13 poll, which was subsequently touted on US President Donald Trump’s social media.

The Zman Yisrael and new Channel 13 polls both showed Arab-majority parties holding the balance of power, though leaders in both Netanyahu’s bloc and the “change bloc” have said they would refuse to rely on Arab support.

In the Zman Yisrael poll, the anti-Zionist Joint Arab List and the traditionalist Ra’am party respectively received eight and six seats, the same results as in last week’s Zman poll.

Ra’am has said it wants to join the next government, and it served in the so-called “change government” that briefly unseated Netanyahu in 2021-2022, after the premier himself negotiated with the party on possibly joining his coalition.

The new Zman poll also showed former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar party continuing its run at the top, with 23 seats, down from 24 last week. Behind Yashar in the “change bloc” were right-wing former premier Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad party with 12 seats, down from 14 last week; MK Avigdor Liberman’s hawkish-secularist Yisrael Beytenu with 10 seats, up from nine last week; and former deputy IDF chief Yair Golan’s left-leaning Democrats with eight seats, the same as last week.

Netanyahu’s Likud was the second-largest party in the Zman poll, with 21 seats, down from 22 in last week’s poll. Behind Likud in Netanyahu’s bloc were the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox Shas with 10 seats, up from nine last week; its Ashkenazic counterpart United Torah Judaism with eight seats, down from nine last week; National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s extremist Otzma Yehudit with six seats, down from seven last week; and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism with four seats, the same as last week.

Rounding out the bloc of Netanyahu’s supporters was hawkish former IDF general Ofer Winter, whose People of Israel party earned four seats, after falling short of the electoral threshold in last week’s poll.

Winter’s party had debuted in the Zman Yisrael poll last month at six seats, sinking Religious Zionism under the electoral threshold, as the two parties vied for support from right-wing, religious voters disenchanted by the government’s failure to draft Haredi men.

Religious Zionism has since managed to crack the threshold after joining up with extremist former Likud MK Moshe Feiglin, head of the small Zehut party. In turn, People of Israel has dipped below the threshold, as Netanyahu — seeking to prop up Religious Zionism — launched repeated verbal attacks against Winter, accusing him of planning to bolt to the opposition.

Winter has said he would recommend Netanyahu to President Isaac Herzog for premier, but has also railed against the government’s effort to codify the Haredi exemption from military service.

Large majority of ‘change bloc’ supporters want leaders to rally around single candidate for premier

In the Israeli electoral system, in the week after the elections, every Knesset faction can recommend to the president a certain lawmaker to form a government.

The president determines, based on the consultations with the factions, which candidate has the best chance of forming a government, and then empowers that candidate to cobble together a coalition that can be voted into power by a majority of lawmakers. If nobody is able to form a governing coalition, snap elections are called.

Eisenkot, head of the largest party in the “change bloc,” last week accused Bennett and Liberman of hurting the bloc’s chances of forming a government by failing to preemptively acknowledge the Yashar party chief as their candidate for prime minister.

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, whose Yesh Atid party merged into Bennett’s party as a minor faction, is slated to host Eisenkot, Liberman, Bennett and Golan on Saturday night to iron out the bloc’s internal differences.

Ahead of the meeting, the Zman poll asked respondents who support Yashar, B’Yachad, Yisrael Beytenu or The Democrats whether the four parties should declare their support for a single, agreed-upon candidate for prime minister.

A large majority of respondents, 67%, said yes; a minority of 22% said no; and 11% said they don’t know. A significant share of the “no” respondents were supporters of B’Yachad, whose leader, Bennett, headed the “change government” despite controlling just six seats in parliament.

The Zman Yisrael poll was conducted on Wednesday and Thursday by Yossi Tatika of Tatika Research & Media in collaboration with the Adgenda panel, and surveyed 500 respondents with a margin of error of ±4.4%.

New Channel 13 poll indicates Netanyahu’s favorable result last week may have been an outlier

The poll published by Channel 13 on Wednesday night also reflected political deadlock but awarded four seats to the merger of former minister Yoaz Hendel’s HaMiluimnikim (“The Reservists”) party and economist Yaron Zelekha’s HaKalkalit (“Economic”) party.

The party does not align fully with either Netanyahu’s bloc or the “change bloc,” and instead belongs to the so-called “third bloc,” which rejects both Arab and Haredi parties as coalition partners.

The Hendel-Zelekha merger failed to crack the electoral threshold in the Zman Yisrael poll. It was the first time the merger cracked the threshold in the Channel 13 poll.

The network’s poll also awarded 22 seats to Eisenkot’s Yashar; 18 seats to Netanyahu’s Likud; 11 seats each to the Democrats and B’Yachad; eight each to Yisrael Beytenu, the Joint List and United Torah Judaism; seven each to Otzma Yehudit and Shas; six seats to Religious Zionism; and five seats each to Ra’am and People of Israel.

The poll’s sample size is 1,503 and its margin of error is ±2.5%.

Earlier Wednesday, Trump’s account on his Truth Social platform posted an article from right-wing US news outlet Newsmax titled “Netanyahu Bloc Takes Lead in Latest Israeli Election Poll,” about last week’s Channel 13 poll in which Netanyahu’s bloc pulled ahead of the “change bloc” 54-52.

Most polls, including those conducted by Channel 13, have shown Netanyahu’s bloc tied with or lagging behind the “change bloc.” Trump has refrained from endorsing Netanyahu when asked about the possibility by reporters.

Jacob Magid contributed to this report.