Final Polls: Netanyahu Edging Towards Majority Right-Wing Bloc

Final polls have Netanyahu edging toward majority right-wing bloc

The final polls released ahead of next week’s election indicated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was inching his way closer to being able to form a right-wing coalition, but still falling just short of the mark.

In the Channel 12 and 13 surveys released Friday, which under Israeli law was the last day polls were allowed to be published before the September 17 vote, Netanyahu’s Likud party and its centrist rival Blue and White were in a dead heat. However, Netanyahu’s potential right-wing coalition moved up to 59 and 58 seats in the respective surveys. Sixty-one seats are needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset.

Most polls in recent months had Netanyahu’s right-wing and religious partners at 55 or 56 seats, with the rise in Friday’s polls indicating that momentum was with them in the final days before the election.

Analysts on Channel 12 noted that the right-wing bloc has traditionally also fared better in the actual vote, compared to the polls, potentially heralding good news for its constituent parties.

Camil Fuchs, the pollster who conducted the Channel 13 survey, also highlighted the difficulty of polling in the ultra-Orthodox community and said his results could be underestimating Shas and United Torah Judaism’s actual electoral strength.

Analysts also said that a low turnout was expected amid voter apathy, but he ultra-Orthodox community might duck that trend, with rabbis calling on their constituency to vote.

In both of Friday’s surveys, Likud and Blue and White were each predicted to win 32 seats. The two parties received 35 seats apiece in elections in April.

The polls also indicated that the left-wing parties were hemorrhaging support.

The left-wing Democratic Camp alliance received six seats in the Channel 12 poll and five from Channel 13.

Labor, which is running together with former MK Orly Levy-Abekasis’s Gesher party, got five seats from Channel 12 and four from Channel 13, both of which would mark an all-time low for the party whose previous iterations led Israel for nearly 30 years after the state’s founding.