Midgam conducted a poll of 512 Haredim for Mishpacha (Family) Magazine that was published on Oct 12 2016.
Which Party will you vote for in the next elections?
62% UTJ, 13.6% Shas, 9.8% Don’t know, 6.4% Different Haredi party, 4.7% Don’t vote, 3.5% Non-Haredi party
Among Haredi Ashkenazim: 82.8% of Lithuanians (Degel HaTorah) will vote UTJ compared to 74.5% of Hasidim (Agudat Yisrael). Overall 2.5% of Haredi Ashkenazim will vote Shas.
Among Haredi Sephardim: 52.8% Shas, 17% Undecided, 10.2% A Haredi Party that is not Shas or UTJ, 10% UTJ and 10% won’t vote or will vote for a non-Haredi party.
Which Haredi politician are you most satisfied with?
28.2% Litzman, 20.8% Gafni, 7.1% Parush, 6.9% Deri
Additional Note #1: Degel HaTorah is close to 60% of UTJ voters compared to a little over 40% for Agudat Yisrael.
Additional Note #2: Agudat Yisrael breakdown: 13.7% Shlomi Emunim Faction (Deputy Minister Porush), 11% Central Faction (Minister Litzman), 5.7% Belz (MK Eichler), 2.4% Vizhnitz (MK Moses).
Are there any other polls to compare this with? Otherwise its hard to tell how much trouble this is for shas because much of their voter base isn’t haredi or dati at all.
I don’t recall a public poll of Haredim in a Haredi publication with these exact questions. I can compare it with various private polls that I’ve seen. Polling Haredim is quite difficult. I’d love to get my hands on the methodology they used to determined the accurate % for each sect.
The difference between Shas & UTJ in 2015 was 31,470 votes. A majority of Sephardi Haredim have been voting for Shas from the start and it would be a big blow if they lose their Haredi base. Shas had 4-6 seats from 1984-1996 and that was a Haredi base. When they transitioned into double digits, especially the 17 seats they won in 1999, that included traditional Sephardi voters. After Deri unseated Yishai the party started to trend away from the traditional voters that had them consistently in double digits and back to the Haredi base.
If you believe this poll with a 100% confidence rate there are two main takeaways and they are actually on the UTJ side: Degel & Agudah should have their share of seats switched and Litzman should no longer lead UTJ or even Agudah.