Meretz is below the minimum vote threshold for the first time, according to a poll published by Kan 11 yesterday evening. The left-wing party headed by Nitzan Horowitz gained only 2.8% of the votes in the poll sample; 3.5% is the minimum vote share required to receive any Knesset representation. The voters who abandoned Meretz appear to have turned to the Labor Party, headed by Merav Michaeli, which in this poll is projected to win seven Knesset seats in the March 23 election. Some may have also gone to Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid, which is projected to win 18 seats.
The poll published yesterday shows Likud on 29 seats, Gideon Sa'ar's New Hope party on 14, Yamina on 13, the Joint Arab list on 9, Shas on 8, Labor and United Torah Judaism on 7 each, Yisrael Beitenu on 6, the Religious Zionist party with Otzma Yehudit on 5, Blue & White on 4, and Meretz, as mentioned, with no seats, as is Yaron Zelekha's Economic party and Ra'am, led by Mansour Abbas.
If Meretz does indeed remain outside the Knesset, it will be for the first time since the party was founded in 1992. The upshot of the projected results is that the pro-Netanyahu block, i.e. Likud and the haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jewish) parties, have a total of 49 Knesset seats. If Yamina, led by Naftali Bennett, joins the block after the election, Netanyahu will have the support of 62 of the 120 Knesset members, and will be able to form a government.
The respondents in the poll were also asked whom they would prefer as prime minister in two different scenarios: Netanyahu versus Lapid, and Netanyahu versus Sa'ar. In the first scenario, Netanyahu came out ahead with 45% support versus just 28% for Lapid (the remaining respondents had no preference). In the second scenario, however, Netanyahu's margin was just 38% to Sa'ar's 33%, one of the narrowest gaps for Netanyahu against a rival seen in recent elections. Nevertheless, Sa'ar's party is not even close to Likud in projected Knesset seats.
The average results of the five most recent polls are are follows:
Likud - 30 Knesset seats
Yesh Atid - 18
New Hope - 13
Yamina - 11
Joint Arab List - 9
Shas - 8
United Torah Judaism - 7
Yisrael Beitenu - 6
Labor - 6
Meretz - 4
Religious Zionist-Otzma Yehudit - 4
Blue & Whiite - 4
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on February 10, 2021
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