Jeremy's Knesset Insider

Knesset Jeremy’s Weekly Average – The Israeli Poll of Polls

Knesset Jeremy Weekly Average #14 (week of March 1-7 2015) of 12 polls from 8 leading polling companies (3 Panels, 2 Teleseker, 2 Midgam, 1 Smith, 1 Dialog, 1 Maagar Mochot,  1 New Wave, 1 Geocartography,  0 Sarid & TRI.

(Last Week in brackets), current Knesset seats in [brackets]

1st 23.50 (23.66) [20] Zionist Union (Labor+Livni)

2nd 22.83 (23.08) [18] Likud

3rd 12.58 (12.41) [11] The Joint (Arab) List

4th 12.30 (11.91) [20] Yesh Atid

5th 11.91 (12.00) [11] Bayit Yehudi

6th 08.25 (08.16) [02] Koolanu (Kahlon+Kadima)

7th 06.83 (06.75) [10] Shas

8th 06.66 (06.91) [07] Yahadut Hatorah/UTJ

9th 05.58 (05.66) [13] Yisrael Beitenu

10th 05.33 (05.00) [06] Meretz

11th 04.16 (04.41) [02] Yachad (Yishai+Chetboun+Marzel)

66.25 (67.08) [63] Right-Religious-Kahlon (Parties that have not ruled out nominating a Netanyahu coalition)

53.75 (52.91) [57] Center-Left-Arab (Parties that have ruled out nominating a Netanyahu coalition)

Changes: Yesh Atid passes Bayit Yehudi for fourth place and Shas replaces UTJ for seventh place.

Largest Gains: Yesh Atid gained 0.39 of a seat; Meretz gained 0.33 of a seat and The Joint (Arab) List gained 0.17.

Biggest Losses: Likud, UTJ and Yachad all dropped 0.25 of a seat.

Swing: Less than 1.1 seat change across the board from last week.

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The 3-phase process to the Prime Minister House: Phase 1 – Elections (seats). Phase 2 – President’s Residence (nomination). Phase 3 – Knesset vote (61 MKs needed).

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Knesset Jeremy Analysis – Week 14:

1 – The Speech, The Debate and Purim.

The election is ten days away. Yet, it seems like a majority of Israelis concentrated on the Jewish holiday of Purim during a week that was dominated by headlines and analysis from the previous weekend’s debate and Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. The overall swing was about 1.1 Knesset seats.

Likud lost a quarter of a seat this week, despite polling better in the second part of the week following Netanyahu’s Knesset speech, due to a poor showing in the beginning of the week ahead of the speech. Overall Likud had a high of 24 (3 polls) and a low of 21 (1 poll) for a 22.83 average compared to Zionist Union’s low of 22 and high of 24 for an average of 23.5. The best news for Netanyahu this week was Shas’s decision to join Yachad and Bayit Yehudi in endorsing Netanyahu for Phase 2.

Herzog is happy to see the parties that have ruled out nominating a Netanyahu coalition increase to 53.75 with two polls this week giving the bloc 56 seats. His bloc did suffer a setback when The Joint List announced they would not sign a voter exchange agreement with Meretz. Herzog who signed with Meretz was hoping to increase his bloc by cancelling the agreement to sign with Yesh Atid if The Joint List agreed to sign with Meretz. If The Joint List won’t sign a voter exchange agreement with Meretz, it will be interesting to see if they will be able to bring themselves to nominate Herzog for Phase 2. It is great news for his bloc that Meretz is up this week.

With the top two parties fighting for the largest list, the battle for the third largest list will be an interesting story-line to follow. The Joint List, Yesh Atid and Bayit Yehudi are all averaging within a half a seat of each other. Yesh Atid is the party with momentum and hasn’t been in single digits since Feb 15. Kulanu is still trying to figure out how to get out of single digits.

Shas enjoyed a bump after Deri’s endorsement of Netanyahu, receiving 7 and 8 seats in the last two polls released this week. There was a lot of pressure for Deri to support Netanyahu. A previous public poll showed that just 4% of Shas voters preferred Herzog to Netanyahu. Yachad was down to 4 seats in the last ten polls conducted this week. Yishai is expected to lose from Deri’s endorsement. 5 polls (Smith, Panels, Midgam, Dialog and New Wave) had UTJ at just 6 seats this week.

2 – Week 15 Preview: The Last Week of Polling

On Friday I will release the last Knesset Jeremy Weekly Average. This means Knesset Jeremy Weekly Average #15 will most likely be the last poll related post on Knesset Jeremy for this election cycle due to the Israeli law.

In the final Poll of Polls post I will post a prediction for the final results that will be based on the polls average, factions of seats lost votes to the 15 parties expected not to pass the threshold, vote-swap agreements and momentum. This will be based on pure science and math, no hunches or gut feelings. I can tell you ahead of time that it will be wrong, but it will be interesting to see how close (or far) it is from the final results.

In 2013 the KnessetJeremy Average predicted 8 of the 12 lists elected within 1 seat of the final election results.

Official Results (KJ AVG) Party
31 (35) Likud Beitenu
15 (18) Labor
12 (15) Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home/National Union)
19 (12) Yesh Atid
11 (11) Shas
6 (7) Movement
7 (6) Yahadut Hatorah/UTJ
6 (6) Meretz
4 (4) Hadash
4 (3) Ra’am-Ta’al
3 (3) Balad
2 (2) Kadima (Model predicted Kadima over 2 seats but under 2.4 seats)

https://knessetjeremy.com/2013/01/18/knesset-jeremy-poll-of-polls-likud-beitenu-33-7-labor-16-5-bayit-yehudi-14-0-yesh-atid-10-9-shas-10-6-movement-7-2/

For more analysis on the ‘Poll of Polls’ you can catch my weekly radio interview on Sundays with Gil Hoffman on Voice of Israel.com

Knesset Jeremy’s Weekly Average – The Israeli Poll of Polls

Knesset Jeremy Weekly Average #13 (week of Feb 21-Feb 28 2015) of 12 polls from 7 leading polling companies (3 Panels, 2 Teleseker, 2 Smith, 2 Dialog, 1 Midgam, 1 Geocartography, 1  TRI,  0 Maagar Mochot, Sarid & New Wave)

(Last Week in parentheses), current Knesset seats in [brackets]

1st 23.66 (23.90) [20] Zionist Union (Labor+Livni)

2nd 23.08 (23.80) [18] Likud

3rd 12.41 (12.00) [11] The Joint (Arab) List

4th 12.00 (12.50) [11] Bayit Yehudi

5th 11.91 (11.10) [20] Yesh Atid

6th 08.16 (08.10) [02] Koolanu (Kahlon+Kadima)

7th 06.91 (07.20) [07] Yahadut Hatorah/UTJ

8th 06.75 (06.60) [10] Shas

9th 05.66 (05.60) [13] Yisrael Beitenu

10th 05.00 (05.00) [06] Meretz

11th 04.41 (04.20) [02] Yachad (Yishai+Chetboun+Marzel)

67.08 (68.00) [63] Right-Religious-Kahlon (Parties that have not ruled out nominating a Netanyahu coalition)

52.91 (52.00) [57] Center-Left-Arab (Parties that have ruled out nominating a Netanyahu coalition)

Changes: The Joint (Arab) List passes Bayit Yehudi for third place.

Largest Gains: Yesh Atid gained 0.8 of a seat; The Joint (Arab) List gained 0.4 of a seat and Yachad gained 0.2.

Biggest Losses: Likud dropped 0.8 of a seat; Bayit Yehudi dropped 0.5 of a seat and Zionist Union & UTJ lost 0.3 of a seat.

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The 3-phase process to the Prime Minister House: Phase 1 – Elections (seats). Phase 2 – President’s Residence (nomination). Phase 3 – Knesset vote (61 MKs needed).

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Knesset Jeremy Analysis – Week 13:

1 – The Debate – Phase 2 & 3 Game-changers.

It is human nature to want to predict the future. The Debate between the eight party leaders representing a majority of Israeli voters, 66.3 seats according to our weekly average, was more focused at times on Phases 2 & 3 than the policy positions that will elect the party leaders in Phase 1. The Israeli public, as well as analysts, are asking themselves who is willing to sit with who (and at what cost) and how the next government will look like.

The Debate gave us a clear picture of what eight of the eleven party leaders are thinking 19 days before the election. Both candidates for Prime Minister, Netanyahu and Herzog, watched the debate from their homes with one question in mind: What are the party leaders thinking about doing in Phases 2 & 3.

There is a huge difference between a political analyst and a poll analyst. You can analyze Phase 1 with math and science. With Phases 2 & 3 – You need to be a prophet to know what will happen because of the many statistical possibilities that are based on the Phase 1 data that has not yet taken place. However, if we choose to believe the politicians and their statements from The Debate, you don’t need to be a prophet to analyze Phases 2 & 3.

Koolanu’s Moshe Kahlon decided to double-down on his Finance Minister strategy. The overall feeling is that the wildcard Kahlon cares more about being Finance Minister than who is Prime Minister. He wasn’t shy about it either, in his closing pitch he asked to be Israel’s next Finance Minister. Overall, Kahlon’s performance was all over the place. He went right when he talked about a united Jerusalem and keeping the Jordan valley, stating his only differences with Netanyahu are on economic and social issues. He also went left by talking about his vision for a Palestinian State if a partner arises, he wouldn’t rule out nominating Herzog in Phase 2 or sitting in a government with Meretz in Phase 3. Kahlon kept name-dropping Former Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s legacy and referring to his previous Likud background with pride. He side-stepped how a Begin-Likud guy could nominate Herzog for Prime Minister. He chose not to address the fact that Herzog already offered the Finance portfolio to someone else and for some reason no one bothered asking him that key question.

Yisrael Beitenu’s Avigdor Liberman took a sharp turn to the right. Herzog would object to a majority of the ‘minimum’ demands and campaign promises that Liberman proposed. He attacked Meretz and repeatedly stressed he wouldn’t sit with them. He also attacked The Joint List’s Iman Udah countless times, going as far as calling him a Fifth Column and a Palestinian rep that should sit in Abbas’s Parliament.

Shas’s Aryeh Deri also went right. He said there is no partner for peace with the Palestinians and rejected Iman Udah’s offer to work together if Udah remains focused on the Palestinian issue. Deri made it clear he will sit with anyone including Eli Yishai, but he won’t sit with Yair Lapid, who refuses to turn the clock back on last term’s legislation. Deri had started out by talking about his old friendship and coffee meetings he used to share with Lapid, by the end of The Debate he was attacking him bitterly. Deri also refused to comment on the content of the tapes of Rav Ovadiah Yosef and instead used it as a way to get into a fight with Eli Yishai over who is the Maran’s true successor.

Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid refused to agree to the possibility of turning the clock back on what is needed to bring Deri, and one would think Litzman, into the next government. Lapid ignored Deri’s olive branches and at one point even suggested to Deri to help rehabilitate him from the time he sat in jail as a convicted felon. Lapid crushed Herzog’s dream of having both of them in the same coalition.

The Joint List’s Iman Udah refused to commit to helping Herzog in Phase 2 or 3. He refused to respond to any of Liberman’s questions including the question if he is Israeli or “Palestinian as he claims to be”. He wouldn’t answer head-on anything that had to do with MK Hanin Zoabi and if he shared those views. He complained about getting the least time to speak and reminded the audience that he is the leader of the third largest party in the polls.

Meretz’s Zahava Gal-On sounded like Naftali Bennett’s spokeswoman when she said that everyone including the Zionist Union wants to join the next Netanyahu government. She also made it clear that she will not sit with Liberman in the same government as a matter of true principle.

We know that the other two party leaders will be backing Prime Minister Netanyahu and it was interesting that Eli Yishai and Naftali Bennett refused to fight each other. Bennett attacked Liberman & Kahlon for their support of a two-state solution. Yishai fought off attacks from Deri on what Rav Ovadiah Yosef would think of his decision to run with outcasts from Bayit Yehudi and Kahanaists

Main takeaway from The Debate: Herzog’s issue of needing to choose between Yisrael Beitenu or Meretz & Yesh Atid or Haredim is very real & crushing to his ability to form a new coalition, even in the scenario where The Joint List can be convinced to join a Herzog-led coalition.

2 – Week 14 Preview: The Speech & Purim

The first part of the week will be overshadowed by “the speech” and the second part of the week will be overshadowed by celebrations surrounding the Jewish holiday of Purim and Shushan Purim in selected cities.

For more analysis on the ‘Poll of Polls’ you can catch my weekly radio interview on Sundays with Gil Hoffman on Voice of Israel.com

Knesset Jeremy’s Weekly Average – The Israeli Poll of Polls

Knesset Jeremy Weekly Average #12 (week of Feb 15-Feb 20 2015) of 10 polls from 8 leading polling companies (2 Panels, 2 Teleseker, 1 Smith, 1 Dialog, 1 Midgam, 1 Maagar Mochot, 1 Geocartography, 1  TRI,  0 Sarid & New Wave)

(Last Week in brackets), current Knesset seats in [brackets]

1st 23.9 (23.2) [20] Zionist Union (Labor+Livni)

2nd 23.8 (24.4) [18] Likud

3rd 12.5 (12.4) [11] Bayit Yehudi

4th 12.0 (12.4) [11] The Joint (Arab) List

5th 11.1 (10.1) [20] Yesh Atid

6th 08.1 (08.0) [02] Koolanu (Kahlon+Kadima)

7th 07.2 (07.0) [07] Yahadut Hatorah/UTJ

8th 06.6 (06.8) [10] Shas

9th 05.6 (05.8) [13] Yisrael Beitenu

10th 05.0 (05.1) [06] Meretz

11th 04.2 (04.4) [02] Yachad (Yishai+Chetboun+Marzel)

68.0 (69.0) [63] Right-Religious-Kahlon (Parties that have not ruled out nominating a Netanyahu coalition)

52.0 (51.0) [57] Center-Left-Arab (Parties that have ruled out nominating a Netanyahu coalition)

Changes: Zionist Union passes Likud to be the largest list & Bayit Yehudi breaks the third place tie with The Joint (Arab) List dropping back down to fourth place.

Largest Gains: Yesh Atid gained 1 seat; Zionist Union gained 0.7 of a seat and UTJ gained 0.2.

Biggest Losses: Likud dropped 0.6 of a seat; The Joint (Arab) List dropped 0.4 of a seat & three parties (Shas, Yisrael Beitenu & Yachad) lost 0.2 of a seat.

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The 3-phase process to the Prime Minister House: Phase 1 – Elections (seats). Phase 2 – President’s Residence (nomination). Phase 3 – Knesset vote (61 MKs needed).

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Knesset Jeremy Analysis – Week 12:

1 – 23 days Left – Netanyahu vs Herzog: Zionist Union 23.9, Likud 23.8

For most of the election campaign the Zionist Union has averaged as the largest list. The Zionist Union led for four straight weeks, from Week 2 until Week 5, and after a week break led again for another three weeks straight, from Week 6 to Week 9. Herzog realized it was time for a change after Likud had their first back-to-back weeks at the top (Weeks 10 & 11). In comes Reuven Adler and suddenly Livni is taking a back seat. That will be a storyline to follow as we get closer. If the rumors are true and Adler is trying to push Livni to give up on her rotation agreement – Things could get a lot more interesting.

So far Likud circles agree that they got off lightly from the State Comptroller Report. The report is expected to still get a lot of play in the media cycle this coming week and it is possible it could do some damage as other parties help keep the report in the headlines.

The head-to-head match-up for largest list is most likely going down to the wire, with just 0.1 seats separating the largest two lists. As for the much talked about ‘national unity government’ scenario, at a combined 47.7 seats, Likud & Zionist Union would need to invite additional parties to create a national unity government.

2 – The Players: Bayit Yehudi 12.5, The Joint (Arab) List 12, Yesh Atid 11.1

Bayit Yehudi has had a lousy month. They started the week with an average of 11.5 in the first four polls, with some results having the party dip as low as 5^th place. Something changed mid-week and Bayit Yehudi finished with an average of 13.16 in the last six polls of the week. Some of the votes are coming from Likud but others are actually coming from Yisrael Beitenu. Yisrael Beitenu averaged 6.25 in the first four polls of the week and 5.16 in the six polls released later in the week.

The Joint (Arab) List has four party leaders and each party leader has a different answer to the question of what the list is planning to do in Phase 2 & Phase 3. One thing that is certain is that none of them will be backing Prime Minister Netanyahu. It is very possible that the four party leaders give different answers to President Rivlin during Phase 2. This will be an interesting dilemma for President Rivlin. The law says it is the leader of the list, not the leader of each party who makes the decision on nomination in Phase 2. If President Rivlin goes strictly according to the law it is the new Hadash leader who would get to make the decision for all of the other party leaders and remarks by both MKs Zachalka (Balad) and Tibi (Ta’al) would be irrelevant. The Joint List can decide to split their vote in Phase 3, but for now a majority of the candidates on The Joint List rule out the option of even considering voting for a Zionist government in Phase 3.

Yesh Atid had a good week. They started with an average of 10 seats in the first three polls of the week and jumped to 11.5 seats in the final seven. Overall they gained the most ground of the 11 lists expected to pass the threshold this week. It is most likely that Lapid is benefiting from the other party leaders mistakes because nothing major happened during the Yesh Atid campaign this week that would explain Lapid gaining a full seat. It appears that many of the undecided voters are answering Yesh Atid this week and Yair Lapid is going to do what he can to keep them locked down.

3 – The Third-Tier: Koolanu 8.1, UTJ 7.2, Shas 6.6

Kahlon expected to be higher in the polls with three weeks and change to go. He knows that his party has the promise to be the breakout party of this election. He still has some time but Koolanu is polling lower than Yesh Atid did at Week 12 during the previous cycle. Kahlon will need to shake things up to get out of the third-tier.

UTJ’s decision to open their main campaign headquarters in Petah Tikva shows a great deal about their plans for extending their voter base.  Petah Tikva, the city that finished in fifth place in votes cast two-years ago, is a former National Religious Party stronghold and UTJ received 4% of the Petah Tikva vote in 2013.

The last time Deri led Shas into an election they received 17 seats in 1999. Yishai led the party to 11 seats in 2003, 12 in 2006 and 11 seats in 2009. The joint-leadership ticket of Yishai-Deri-Attias repeated 11 seats in 2013. Deri understands he won’t repeat his 1999 achievement with Attias in retirement and Yishai running with his own list. Despite knocking off a few more Shas MKs from the current list (Zeev, Amnon Cohen & Edri), Deri will need 8 seats for all the remaining Shas MKs to retain their positions.

4- Fighting the Threshold: Yisrael Beitenu 5.6, Meretz 5, Yachad 4.2

After nine years (2006-2015) as a party with double-digits MKs, between 11 and 15 depending on the election, Foreign Minister Liberman is polling within two-seats of the new 3.25% threshold that he created. Yisrael Beitenu is currently in position to be remembered as the biggest loser of the election. It would take a dramatic change to prevent Yisrael Beitenu from dropping from their current 13 seats to become a single-digit party. When his bill passed less than a year ago Yisrael Beitenu had five ministers, in the next government Liberman might be stuck with just two. Following Lapid and Livni’s firing there were rumors in the Knesset that Shas & UTJ would agree to join Netanyahu to create a narrow 61-MK majority coalition and it was Liberman who preferred elections over the Haredim in the government. If those rumors are true, one has to wonder if Liberman regrets that decision.

Meretz has been dropping every week, slowly but surely. The last time Meretz didn’t drop was back in Week 5 when they retained their 6.5 seats from Week 4.Meretz’s high was 6.8 seats which they received back during Week 1. In some circles there are analysts who are wondering if Meretz, now averaging at 5 seats, will pass the threshold.

This is the second straight week where Yachad passed the electoral threshold in all of the week’s polls. Many expect this trend to continue as additional disgruntled Sephardi Rabbis jump ship from Shas to Yachad. The biggest Sephardic Rabbi pickup of this week was Rabbi Yoram Abergel. On the other side of their electoral spectrum, Yachad took a slight hit in their battle for Chardal (a mix of ultra-orthodox-national religious) voters when Rabbi Zalman Melamed decided to endorse Bayit Yehudi. Rabbi Melamed’s influential student and former MK & National Union Leader Yaakov Katzeleh Katz also endorsed Bayit Yehudi last week. Yachad is pushing the endorsement of influential Chardal Rabbi, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, as their answer to Rabbi Melamed’s endorsement of Bayit Yehudi. Baruch Marzel returns to the list at #4 following the Supreme Court decision to overturn the Central Elections Committee decision to disqualify him. Zoabi’s disqualification was also overturned and she returns to The Joint List.

5 – Week 13 Preview

We have three more installments of the Poll of Polls left and things are heating up. We had eight of the top ten polling companies conducting at least one poll this week. Expect more polls throughout this coming week. This will be the last full week of polling for parties to test ideas ahead of the launch of television ads on March 3.

For more analysis on the ‘Poll of Polls’ you can catch my weekly radio interview on Sundays with Gil Hoffman on Voice of Israel.com