With a week to go before the general election in Israel on March 2, two polls predict that Likud will be the largest party in the Knesset. This is the first time in the current campaign that Benjamin Netanyahu's party has taken a lead, albeit a slender one, over Blue & White, led by Benny Gantz. The polls in question were published by Channel 12 News and Kan yesterday. The turnaround appears to be a result of Likud strengthening at the expense of other parties in the right-wing block, Yamina and the haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jewish) parties, while Blue & White has lost votes to Labor-Gesher-Meretz and the Joint Arab List.
In the average of the five most recent polls, Blue & White still leads, but with such small margins, it very difficult to be sure what awaits us next Monday night. The last week of the campaign will presumably see the parties bringing out their heavy artillery in the hope of gaining ground among undecided voters.
In the background is the COVID-19 coronavirus, which has apparently made its way to Israel, and is generating such hysteria that there is talk of it affecting voter turnout in Israel's third election within a year. The general picture remains, that the political deadlock that has led to this situation is unlikely to be broken.
The following are the numbers of Knesset seats each party is predicted to win on the basis of an average of five recent polls:
Blue & White 34
Likud 33
Joint Arab List 14
Labor-Gesher-Meretz 9
Shas 8
United Torah Judaism 7
Yamina 7
Yisrael Beitenu 7
Otzma Yehudit 0
The polls concerned are: Channel 13 News, February 23; Kan, February 23; Yisrael Hayom, February 21; Ma'ariv, February 21; Direct Pulse, February 20. Because of the averaging process, the total number of seats shown may not equal 120, the actual number of seats in the Knesset.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on February 24, 2020
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