Smith conducted a poll of 500 people with a 4.5% margin of error that was published by Globes on Nov 28 2013.
Current Knesset seats in [brackets]
37 [31] Likud Beitenu
19 [15] Labor
12 [12] Bayit Yehudi
11 [19] Yesh Atid
10 [11] Shas
09 [06] Meretz
08 [07] Yahadut Hatorah/UTJ
04 [04] Hadash
04 [04] Ra’am-Ta’al
03 [06] Movement
03 [03] Balad
00 [02] Kadima
67 [61] Right-Religious
53 [59] Center-Left-Arab
Knesset Jeremy Analysis: Likud Beitenu’s bump is three seats higher than the Panels poll. Labor is second place with 19 seats in both polls. Bayit Yehudi receives 12 seats in both polls. Shas also receives 10 seats in both polls. Meretz has 9 seats in the Smith poll and is the sixth largest party compared to 13 seats and third largest party in the Panels poll. In this poll Livni’s Movement party is down to three seats, barely above the current threshold of 2% which is expected to be raised.
Bottom line: The 67 seats in this poll for the four right wing and religious factions would ensure a very stable coalition for PM Netanyahu without the need of adding coalition pieces from the center or left.
Jeremy's Knesset Insider 
The remark about raising the threshold intrigues me (I had forgotten the plan). Maybe it’s a nice idea to the explore the effect of this plan (if this would be too premature I would understand).
Greetings from The Netherlands 🙂
A bill that would raise the threshold to 4% has already passed its first reading. The current threshold is 2%. In committee the suggestion to lower it to 3% as a compromise has been discussed.
Well, I waited for new polls, but a little bit disappointed. Of course it is good that right-religious block reaches 67 seats but had really hoped to see better numbers for Bayit Yehudi.
Still fascinated by a united right-wing party, reportedly at least Lieberman and Netanyahu have talked about this… That would at least support the Likud convention that tries to stop this 2-state-solution nonsense.
Interesting. So the “Lieberman bounce” for the right is larger than the “Labor bounce” for the left fresh from its new leadership election. It still looks like people do not see the new Labor leader Herzog as any more viable of a PM candidate as Shelly Yachimovich. Even though I want to see Bayit Yehudi with a stronger yield (more seats=more cabinet positions), it looks like Bibi’s coalition options are pretty limited. A Likud-Bayit Yehudi-Yesh Atid-Movement coalition would only give him 63 seats. No one, other than Livni and Obama, want to give Livni another oversized job (Justice Minister) and a forum when her standing has declined so dramatically since her unelected prime ministership. Plus there’s a good chance Movement won’t exist once the threshold is raised. A Likud-Labor coalition won’t happen since Labor (incorrectly) believes itself to be the realistic governing alternative. Yesh Atid won’t sit in any coalition with the Haredi, so Bibi’s only option is then his “natural” coalition of Shas, UTJ, and Bayit Yehudi. This gives all three of these parties a lot of leverage over Likud… and they know it. One has to wonder what concessions Shas/UTJ will extract given that Bayit Yehudi wants the same jobs (Housing, Religious Affairs).
About Yesh Atid; it seems like Lapid will be stripped of most of his power. So too bad for him.
It may be that Bayit Yehudi will have some more leverage over Bibi but still, if Bayit Yehudi will not be significantly bigger than Shas (or UTJ), then there may be several areas interesting to Bennett’s secular voters that the party won’t be able to affect. And then these guys could simply vote for Likud-Beiteinu. So I am really afraid that Shas and UTJ taking over housing, religious matters etc. will lead some secular right-wing voters to instead vote for Bibi-Lieberman.
Plus, I do not think that it is a good strategy to have another election with two right-wing parties with almost the same agenda to run against each other. Last time it hurt the right-wing bloc because of mud-throwing and it could do it again. So if I were sitting in the Likud central committee or the Yisrael Beiteinu central committee (if a “real” one existed) I would surely vote for a LIkud-Yisrael Beiteinu-Bayit Yehudi merger. Also establish a serious hareidi faction for moderate (pro-reform) hareidim.
There is a “moderate” Chareidi (working Litvak – Chassidim work outside the Yeshiva anyway) party called Tov. One of their problems is that their name was taken by BY as their letters, and this confused people; I know this hurt them in Beit Shemesh. But I doubt there is a large Chareidi constituency for the sort of reform you are probably thinking about; moderate and reform are two very different things.
BY actually used טב in 2006 (Mafdal-NU). When Tov was founded in Bet Shemesh in time for the 2008 election they used tov because it freed up and they thought they would get some Zionist voters who might get mixed up. When BY used טב again in Jan 2013 elections, Tov had to made a decision and they decided to keep going with Tov as a name and ran in other cities as well such as Jerusalem. Tov’s best showing was the one seat (out of 19) they got in the 2008 Bet Shemesh election, they are quite a minority.
Would also add that this right-wing party could maybe (because of the higher threshold) reach 50+ seats with steling away some hareidi seats.
Did you see the report in Arutz Sheva today about Moshe Kahlon establishing a center-left party in 2017? Anyone believe that?
He apparently thinks that he could take away votes from Yesh Atid and Shas (!) – what a combination! As of today that idea seems quite strange.
Any comments?