ToI poll: Netanyahu’s bloc leads, Likud tied for 1st, as voters fret over election’s outcome

The bloc of parties supporting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the lead with less than a month to go until Israel’s October 27 election, while the ruling Likud party tied for the most votes with Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition Yashar faction, according to a new poll published Thursday by The Times of Israel’s sister site, Zman Yisrael.

But the prime minister’s supporters, as well as the bloc of four Jewish-led parties opposing him, are both far from winning a majority of the 120-seat Knesset, the poll found.

The survey was the latest in recent weeks to show Netanyahu’s presumed bloc pulling ahead, after months in which nearly every poll showed his supporters trailing the presumed opposition bloc.

The shift has sparked anxiety among Netanyahu’s opponents, the poll found, with 88% saying they are worried about the election’s outcome. But the other side is also uneasy, with nearly 70% of Netanyahu’s supporters saying they’re worried about the result.

Overall, the poll found that more than 80% of voters are worried about the election’s outcome.

The poll found that the parties supporting Netanyahu would collectively win 53 seats in the Knesset, while the four Jewish-led parties opposed to him would win 49. Both camps are far from a 61-seat majority.

Arab-led parties, which also oppose Netanyahu but have rarely been included in governing coalitions, would win 13, while a non-aligned party led by Yoaz Hendel and Yaron Zelekha would win five seats.

Sitting atop the poll are Likud and Yashar, with 21 seats each. Previous polls had shown Yashar in the lead by a few seats.

Next come two opposition parties, B’Yachad and Yisrael Beytenu, with 10 seats each. The Sephardi Haredi Shas party would win nine, followed by three parties with eight seats each: the left-wing Democrats, the Arab-led Joint List and the Ashkenazi Haredi United Torah Judaism.

The far-right Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism-Zehut parties would win six and five seats, respectively. The Arab-led Ra’am would also win five, as would the Hendel-Zelekha faction. The right-wing, pro-Netanyahu People of Israel party, led by Ofer Winter, would win four.

The poll was conducted on September 30 and October 1 by Yossi Tatika of Tatika Research & Media in collaboration with the Adgenda panel, and surveyed a total sample of 500 respondents with a margin of error of ±4.4%.

The survey came out a day after Channel 13 news released a poll showing Netanyahu’s bloc regaining its lead over his rivals, in a reversal from the previous week.

According to Channel 13, Yashar would be the largest party if the elections were held today, winning 21 seats, down one from last week. The next largest faction was Likud with 19 seats, followed by B’Yachad with 11, Democrats with 11, Yisrael Beytenu with nine, Joint List with nine, Otzma Yehudit with eight, United Torah Judaism with eight, Shas with seven, Religious Zionism-Zehut with seven, Ra’am with five and People of Israel with five.

Together, parties backing Netanyahu would have 54 seats, versus 52 for the opposition Zionist bloc and 14 for the Arab-majority factions.

Unlike its poll from last week and the new Zman Yisrael survey, the Hendel-Zelekha faction — which has not committed to either bloc — failed to clear the minimum threshold to enter the Knesset in the TV network’s latest survey.

The Channel 13 survey had 1,013 respondents and a 2.5% margin of error.

While horse-race polls are an almost daily occurrence in Israel in the months leading up to elections and are not seen as overly reliable, taken together, the surveys can often serve as a general gauge of the political climate and where the vote may be headed.