TV polls: Potential new right-wing alliance would win big in new election
Survey finds joint slate led by Liberman, Bennett, Sa’ar and ex-Mossad chief Yossi Cohen would be largest party with 25 Knesset seats; 1 day earlier, another poll gave it 35
A new television poll broadcast Monday said a right-wing alliance of Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman, former prime minister Naftali Bennett, New Hope head Gideon Sa’ar and former Mossad director Yossi Cohen would be the largest faction in the Knesset if elections were held today, winning 25 seats.
The Channel 12 news survey came a day after a Channel 13 news poll asking the same question found the prospective party would win 34 seats, and as Bennett again eclipsed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in head-to-head matchups on who is better suited to be premier.
In the Channel 12 poll, Netanyahu’s Likud would be the second biggest with 18 seats, followed by Benny Gantz’s National Unity, which recently exited the coalition, at 17, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid at 13, a left-wing union of the Labor and Meretz parties at 11, Shas at 10, United Torah Judaism at 8, Otzma Yehudit at 8, Hadash-Ta’al at 5 and Ra’am at 5.
Including the right-wing alliance, the opposition would in such an eventuality win 71 seats in the 120-seat legislature, not including Hadash-Ta’al, which isn’t aligned with either bloc.
If parties remain as they are today, aside from the joint Labor-Meretz ticket, the poll said National Unity would be the largest party with 23, while Likud had 20, Yesh Atid 15, Yisrael Beytenu 14, Labor-Meretz 11, Shas 10, Otzma Yehudit 9, UTJ 8, Hadash-Ta’al 5 and Ra’am 5.
The current opposition would in such an eventuality win 68 seats, again not including Hadash-Ta’al.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s far-right Religious Zionist party — part of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition along with Shas, Otzma Yehudit and UTJ — did not clear the minimum vote threshold in either scenario.
In match-ups between Netanyahu and various opposition figures on suitability for the premiership, the premier led with 33% of respondents to Yair Lapid’s 29%, but Bennett was favored by 39% to his 29%.
Bennett’s lead over Netanyahu was even greater than in a poll aired by the network over the weekend, which marked the first time the former premier overtook Israel’s longest-serving leader in a one-on-one contest.
Netanyahu also lost to Gantz in Monday’s survey, with each of them respectively picking up 31% and 34% respondents, after they scored even at 32% in the weekend poll.
Gantz had been leading Netanyahu as the public’s preference for prime minister for over a year, cementing his lead when he agreed to join an emergency war government days after October 7, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages while rampaging through southern Israel.
However, Gantz’s recent resignation from the government has caused him to bleed some of the support he accrued for the ostensible statesmanship he showed in entering it, with Netanyahu briefly overtaking him again as the preferred choice for prime minister in a Channel 12 survey last month.
In the Channel 13 poll released Sunday, Likud was the second largest party with 18 seats behind the proposed right-wing merger, which also knocked National Unity down to 14 seats and Yesh Atid to 10.
Without the right-wing alliance in the race, the survey said National Unity would finish as the largest party with 25 seats, Likud 21, Yesh Atid 12, Yisrael Beytenu 11, Otzma Yehudit 10, Labor-Meretz 10, Shas 9, UTJ 8, Religious Zionism 5, Hadash-Ta’al 5 and Ra’am 4.
Minus Hadash-Ta’al, current opposition parties would have 62 seats, enough for a majority in the 120-member Knesset, while coalition factions would hold 53.
Monday’s Channel 12 survey, conducted by pollster Manu Geva, included 500 respondents and had a 4.4 margin of error. Channel 13’s survey was carried out by by pollster Yitzhak Katz. The network did not provide a margin of error or list the number of respondents.
