102 days until Election Day.

Elections are supposed to be held on March 17th 2015. We are at an early stage of polling. Elections have not yet been officially called, that happens on Monday. We do not know yet how many new parties will run and which existing parties will split, merge or run on a joint ticket. Jan 29th 2015 is an important date. It will most likely be the day where they finalize the list of parties running, along with their full candidate lists. From that point on polling will make more sense.

We are going into election season and this is a great time to take a look at the top polling companies and their accuracy. In previous posts I gave in-depth analysis on 2009 & 2013 election results.

If we are to combine the last two elections: Smith & Panels are the most accurate. In both elections they were among the top 3 most accurate. Maagar Mochot was in the top 3 during the 2009 elections & New Wave was in the top 3 for the 2013 elections.

Shvakim Panorama & Dahaf, two of the least accurate polling companies will not be polling the 2015 election. Dahaf, the least accurate in the last two elections, closed their doors & Prof. Mina Tzemech moved to Midgam.

I will be starting shortly with the weekly Knesset Jeremy Poll of Polls series that was very popular in the last election. Many people have asked me about the trends of certain polling companies in regards to specific parties. It is important to point out that sometimes it was the high or the low result that was the actual accurate result. The point of this exercise is to show which polling companies are on the outlier for each political party. Here is a list of how the top 8 polling companies leaned in recent elections, in alphabetical order.

Dialog: In the 2013 elections Dialog was high on Shas & Yesh Atid. Dialog was low on Likud Beitenu & UTJ. Back in 2009 Dialog was high on both Meretz & Kadima.

Geocartography: In 2013 Prof. Dagani was high on Bayit Yehudi. He was low on Likud Beitenu & Shas.
During the 2009 he was high on Yisrael Beitenu. It is important to point that in general the right bloc does very well in Dagani polls.

Maagar Mochot: Prof. Katz was high on Likud Beitenu, Shas & Meretz in 2013. He was low on Livni, Yesh Atid & Labor. Back in 2009 he was low on Labor as well.

Midgam: In 2013 Prof. Gava was high on Yesh Atid & Livni. He was also low on Meretz.

New Wave: In 2013 New Wave was high on Yesh Atid and Low on Meretz. During 2009 they were high on Likud.

Panels: In 2013 Prof. Lazar was low on Shas. In 2009 he was high on Kadima.

Smith: In 2013 Prof. Smith was high on Yesh Atid.

Telesker: In 2013 they were high on Labor and low on Shas & Meretz. In 2009 they were also high on Labor.