New poll shows Likud-Beytenu continuing to slide
Channel 10 survey has ruling party slipping to 32 seats, Labor receiving 16, Jewish Home 14, and 11 seats each for Shas and Yesh Atid
Adiv Sterman is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
A Channel 10 poll published Wednesday projects that Likud-Beytenu will receive only 32 seats in Tuesday’s elections, 10 seats fewer than the united list holds in the current Knesset.
The party’s slide in the poll echoes trends revealed by The Times of Israel, whose pre-election poll conducted December 25-January 2, gave 34 seats to the party led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Channel 10 survey, which was conducted by professor Kamil Fuchs of the Dialogue institute among 756 respondents, with a 3.1 percent margin of error, placed Labor in second place with 16 seats, two seats below the amount projected in the channel’s last poll, but double the amount of seats it currently holds.
The poll projected that Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home party will gain 14 seats and that both Shas and Yesh Atid will receive 11 seats each. Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua party is predicted to win nine seats.
According to the poll, Meretz will double its strength, surging to six seats. United Torah Judaism receives six seats as well.
Arab-Israeli parties Hadash and Balad each get four seats and Ra’am Ta’al three, according to the poll. The largest party in the current Knesset, Kadima, was projected to win two seats, the same as the far-right Otzma Leyisrael.
The Green Leaf party, Eretz Hadashah and the Am Shalem parties all fall short of garnering enough votes to pass the electoral threshold.
The poll puts the right-wing and Orthodox bloc at 63 seats, down from Friday polls in Israel dailies Yedioth Ahronoth and Maariv, which gave the bloc 64 and 71 seats respectively.
Channel 10’s poll also found that 14% of the voters remained undecided, down from 18% in the channel’s last poll. The Times of Israel poll found 31% of likely voters were undecided, suggesting that as election day draws nearer, more voters are gradually making up their minds.
There are still significant discrepancies between the various polls, and further fluctuations are inevitable in the final six days of the campaign. Many experts say polls should be used to gauge trends — rather than as specific predictions for precise numbers of seats.
