Daijiworld Media Network – Jerusalem
Jerusalem, Jul 3: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would secure 16 seats if he left the Likud party and contested the next parliamentary election under a new political outfit, according to a new opinion poll published on Friday.
The Maariv survey, conducted by Lazar Research in collaboration with Panel4All, projected that Likud without Netanyahu would win just seven seats. Together, the two parties would command 23 seats—three more than the 20 seats Likud is projected to win in its current form.
According to the poll, Netanyahu's new party would become the third-largest in the Knesset, behind Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar! party and the Together alliance led by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, with both projected to secure 20 seats each.
The survey showed Yashar! slipping by one seat to 20, while Together gained one seat to reach 19. Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu also lost a seat and was projected to win 10 seats.
Despite the higher combined tally for Netanyahu and Likud, the poll indicated that the current coalition bloc would weaken, falling to 49 seats. Opposition parties would hold 60 seats, while Arab parties would retain 11 seats.
The survey also found that most Israelis were sceptical about the possibility of a broad unity government after the next election. Thirty-five per cent of respondents said such a coalition had only a slim chance of being formed, while 27 per cent believed it had no chance at all. Only 14 per cent considered it likely, while 24 per cent remained undecided.
The poll further suggested that supporters of opposition and Arab parties were more certain to vote than those backing the governing coalition. While 80 per cent of opposition supporters and 82 per cent of Arab party supporters said they were certain to vote, the figure stood at 72 per cent among coalition supporters.
If elections were held today, the poll projected the following seat tally: Likud (21), Yashar! (20), Together (19), Yisrael Beytenu (10), Democrats (10), Otzma Yehudit (8), Shas (8), United Torah Judaism (8), Hadash-Ta'al (6), Ra'am (5) and Religious Zionism (5).
The survey was conducted between July 1 and 2 among 500 Jewish and Arab respondents aged 18 and above, with a margin of error of 4.4 per cent.