The two-month trend of Yesh Atid gaining at the polls and New Hope’s falling continues, as Yamina threatens to pass New Hope into third place. New Hope, which at one point trailed Likud by only five seats, is now 15 mandates behind the prime minister’s party. This was a three-seat drop for New Hope, which last week pulled in 16 seats in a survey by the same pollster.
“In campaigns, there are good polls and bad polls,” Sa’ar said on Thursday night. “We will start rising now and reach our peak on Election Day.”
The Panels Research survey, taken by pollster Menachem Lazar, predicted 28 seats for Likud, 19 for Yesh Atid, 13 for New Hope, 12 for Yamina, eight each for the Joint List and Shas, seven each for United Torah Judaism and Yisrael Beytenu, six for Labor, and four each for Blue and White, Meretz and the Religious Zionist Party. The Ra’am (United Arab List) Party of MK Mansour Abbas did not cross the 3.25% electoral threshold.
Unlike other recent polls, which found that Yamina leader Naftali Bennett could be the kingmaker who could grant a majority to Netanyahu or opposition leader Yair Lapid, the new poll predicted 47 seats for the bloc of Likud, Shas, UTJ and the Religious Zionist Party, which would not be enough for a majority together with Yamina.
Bennett could however join the 53 seats of the anti-Netanyahu bloc of Yesh Atid, New Hope, Yisrael Beytenu, Labor and Blue and White for 61 seats without Meretz and the Joint List.
Like other recent polls, it found that when asked who is most fit to be prime minister, Sa’ar performs best against Netanyahu. The prime minister’s lead over Sa’ar in that category was found to be 4%. Netanyahu’s lead over Bennett is 8%, and his lead over Lapid is 18%.
The poll of 550 respondents representing a statistical sample of the adult Israeli population had a margin of error of 4.2%.
