Polls: Bennett-led bloc would triumph over PM’s coalition if elections held today
Ex-PM’s party gets 24-27 seats in surveys held amid coalition crisis over draft exemption; poll finds popular support for early elections and excluding Haredim from next coalition
A Channel 12 poll published Wednesday found that the parties comprising Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government would only receive 48 seats if elections were held today, falling far short of the 60-seat minimum needed to form a government.
In contrast, anti-Netanyahu parties, led by former prime minister Naftali Bennett and his newly registered party, would receive 72 seats, the survey indicated.
Of those, non-Arab parties would receive 62 seats, a slim majority in the 120-seat Knesset. (Arab majority parties have traditionally shunned coalitions, though Islamist Ra’am broke that trend when it joined a Bennett-led coalition in 2021-2022).
In a separate Channel 13 poll, Bennett’s party stood at 27 seats, Likud at 24, the Democrats at 10, Shas 10, National Unity 9, Yisrael Beiteinu 9, Yesh Atid 8, Otzma Yehudit 8, United Torah Judaism 7, Ra’am 4 and Hadash-Ta’al 4. Religious Zionism and Balad similarly did not pass.
According to this survey, the Bennett bloc (without Arab parties) would win 63 seats, with Netanyahu’s bloc at 49.
The polls were conducted amid a crisis sparked by ultra-Orthodox parties in Netanyahu’s coalition over the government’s failure to pass a law to exempt yeshiva students from IDF conscription.
Bennett’s party raked in the most votes in the Channel 12 survey, winning 24 seats total, while Netanyahu’s Likud was in second place with 22 seats.
The third-largest party in the survey was the Democrats party (a merger of Labor and Meretz), led by Yair Golan, with 12 seats.
Rabbi Haim Drukman, at Merkaz Shapira, near Kiryat Malachi, on December 26, 2022. (Gil Cohen-Magen/ AFP)
The remainder of the 120 Knesset seats would be split as follows: Shas 10, Yisrael Beytenu 10, Yesh Atid 9, Otzma Yehudit 8, United Torah Judaism 8, National Unity 7, Hadash-Ta’al 5 and Ra’am 5.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party fell below the electoral threshold of 3.25%, with 2.8%, while the secular Arab nationalist party Balad ranked even lower with just 1.2% of votes.
In light of UTJ’s threats to dissolve the coalition over IDF conscription, Channel 12 asked respondents whether they wanted ultra-Orthodox parties to be part of a future government.
Fifty-five percent of respondents said they didn’t, 33% said they did, and 12% said they didn’t know.
The poll also asked voters whether they supported early elections. It found that 57% were in favor of holding early elections, with 88% of those being opposition voters. Meanwhile, 31% opposed the notion, 60% of whom were coalition voters.
Respondents also chose Bennett over Netanyahu as a more suitable candidate for prime minister, with the former enjoying 39% support and the latter only 34%, while 20% responded that neither was fit for the role.
Netanyahu still trounced opposition leader Yair Lapid (39% to 22%) and National Unity chairman Benny Gantz (37% to 23%) among respondents, however.
The Times of Israel Community.