40% Netanyahu, 36% other answers, 24% Lapid 38% Netanyahu, 36% other answers, 26% Gantz 38% Netanyahu, 32% Eisenkot, 30% other answers 39% Bennett, 35% Netanyahu, 26% other answers
Snap Analysis: The latest Kantar Poll follows the same trend as polls conducted by Panels, Midgam, Maagar Mochot and Smith. It is quite interesting to see that a joint party of Eisenkot-Gantz-Lapid would only win 22 seats and finish in third place. In the last elections, Lapid won 24 seats and Gantz 12, but following the Saar split, the two parties now hold a combined 32 seats. Additionally, in this scenario Bennett can form a 63-seat coalition with Eisenkot-Golan-Lieberman, without Raam.
The last major event was the departure of Otzma from the coalition on January 19. Since then, nine public polls have been conducted and released by Panels, Midgam, Maagar Mochot and Smith. Below is a table comparing each party’s current seats to the projected seats based on an average of the nine polls. Additionally, there is a high and a low to provide additional context for the six-week period.
The most notable trends are that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no interest in announcing snap elections due to the decline of his coalition and the continued decline of Yesh Atid at the expense of other opposition parties.
Party
Current Seats
Projected Seats
9-Poll-Avg
High
Low
Likud
32
24
23.5
26
21
National Unity
8
17
17.2
19
16
Yisrael Beitenu
6
15
15
16
12
Democrats (Labor)
4
13
12.5
14
11
Yesh Atid
24
13
12.4
14
8
Shas
11
9
9.3
10
9
Otzma Yehudit
7
8
8.4
9
7
UTJ
7
7
7.1
8
7
Hadash-Taal
5
5
5.3
6
5
Raam
5
5
4.8
6
4
Religious Zionist
6
4
4.2
5
4
Balad
0
0
1.54%
2.40%
1%
New Hope
4
0
1.19%
2%
0.40%
Noam
1
0
–
–
–
Idan Roll Party
*0
0
–
–
–
Scenario Polls:
Midgam’s latest scenario poll has Naftali Bennett’s party with 23 seats – a tie for the top spot with Netanyahu’s Likud. Golan finishes in 3rd place with 12 seats, Gantz drops to fourth place with 11 seats and Lapid wins only 10 seats. In this scenario, Smotrich’s party falls below the threshold.
Panels latest scenario poll has Naftali Bennett’s party with 25 seats compared to 20 seats for Netanyahu’s Likud. Lieberman and Golan are tied with ten each. Lapid, Gantz and Deri are all tied with nine seats each.
It seems that if the former prime minister chooses to run, he will be considered the leading candidate for the current prime minister. A deeper dive into the scenario matching survey shows that Bennett is the only potential candidate who would run head-to-head against Netanyahu and win. Additionally, compared to his competition, Bennett is making the biggest dent in the cross-tabulations of right-wing and coalition voters.
Bottom Line: The worse it looks for the coalition parties in the polls, the more likely it is that the various sides will compromise ahead of the budget deadline at the end of the month.
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Smith conducted a poll of 500 registered Labor members with a 4.5% margin of error that was published by Maariv on April 22 2017. The model took into account age and geographic distribution. Poll was conducted after Margalit joined race with his video.
If Leadership Elections were held today who would you vote for?
(Among people who answered 100% chance they will vote in elections):
28% Peretz, 19% Bar-lev, 19% Gabai, 16% Herzog, 14% Margalit, 4% Don’t know yet
How sure are you that you will vote for the candidate you have chosen from a scale of 1-100?
Notes: There are around 50 thousand members eligible to vote in the election. 74% answered the chance they will vote is above 90%. There are other candidates that were not polled.
Jeremy's Knesset Insider 