Voters soured on Netanyahu, but not sweet on Herzog

If Isaac Herzog wins the upcoming elections, it will be because voters have become disenchanted by Benjamin Netanyahu rather than been won over by the Zionist Camp leader, a Times of Israel survey shows.

In many aspects, Herzog has failed to successfully brand himself in the eyes of likely voters. Herzog has been an MK for 12 years, many of those as a minister, and had previously been Ehud Barak’s cabinet secretary, yet he remains an unknown to many voters.

While 38% of likely voters in our poll give him a favorable rating and 43% a negative rating – itself not a bad positioning — it is the 20% of likely voters who say they don’t have an opinion of him or have never heard of him that suggests his branding failure and indicates that this election simply isn’t about Herzog.

This election campaign has raised his profile since last year’s Times of Israel poll, which found that 35% of voters said they didn’t have an opinion of him or had never heard of him. Some improvement has been made in making voters aware of Herzog, but not as much as might be expected for a prime ministerial candidate.

Campaigns often produce biographical spots that tell the story of candidates, such as the American Democratic Party’s biographical video about Bill Clinton called “The Man From Hope” or Labor’s television commercial about Ehud Barak in 1999 titled “The Number 1 Soldier.” Herzog has yet to tell his story in any direct way, a fact that his campaign might be wise to reexamine.

Among undecided voters, Herzog is even less known, with 36% of undecided voters giving him a favorable rating, 32% an unfavorable rating, and 32% saying they don’t have an opinion of him or have never heard of him. It is Herzog’s brand perception among this group of voters that both the Likud and Zionist Camp will seek to shape in the coming weeks and it could be the deciding factor on March 17.

This election is not just about personalities. The top issue for voters, by a wide margin, is the economy. While Herzog’s brand is improving on these issues, he has failed to take the lead in polls as an opposition candidate must. When asked to identify the most important issue for the government of Israel to address from a list of six issues that also included the Palestinians, the Iranian threat, instability in the region, education, and ultra-Orthodox enlistment, a full 48% of likely voters said economic issues such as the cost of living and price of housing were the most important, up from 43% that gave the same answer in 2013. More likely voters see the country moving in the wrong direction (53%) than the right direction (33%), and it’s largely about the economy.

The data suggests that voters are seeking a leader who can address the economy — their top concern — but have no clear preference about the identity of that leader. When voters are asked which party leader they most trust to manage the economy, 21% say Moshe Kahlon, 19% say Isaac Herzog, 18% say Benjamin Netanyahu, 13% say Yair Lapid, 7% say Naftali Bennett, and a full 22% don’t know.

Among undecided voters, fully 39% don’t know who they most trust on economic issues. Only 10% identify Herzog and just 14% say Netanyahu. It is reasonable to assume that the campaigns will focus in the next few weeks on highlighting their candidate’s economic program and abilities — or their opponent’s failures in that regard.

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The survey was conducted February 1-3, 2015, among a representative sample of 824 Israeli adults who indicated that they were very likely or somewhat likely to vote in the upcoming Knesset elections. Respondents who indicated that they were less likely or not at all likely to vote were not included in the survey sample. 44.7% of completed surveys were directed to landline home phones, 33.5% to mobile phones, and 21.9% were conducted via online panels, helping to compensate for the high percentage of Israelis who do not have regular landline phones. 10.1% of respondents were Arabic speakers surveyed in Arabic, and 10.9% were Russian speakers surveyed in Russian. The findings are rounded to the nearest whole digit. The margin of error is +/-3.41% with a 95% confidence level.

This is the second in a series of articles that The Times of Israel is publishing on the basis of the poll. The survey was formulated by The Times of Israel and the author, from political consultancy firm 202 Strategies. Our survey is the most accurate publicly available poll to date, having questioned a relatively large sample of 824 likely voters — as opposed to the Hebrew media’s norm of 500 eligible voters.

Stephan Miller, cited by Campaigns and Elections magazine in 2008 as “James Carville’s young protégé,” is an American-Israeli public opinion research analyst and communications strategist and a former adviser to Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat who has worked on campaigns in 10 countries across four continents.