5.9 million Israelis will be able to exercise their democratic right to vote in the election for the 20th Knesset tomorrow (Tuesday). More than 10,000 polling stations all around Israel will open at 7:00, and will close at 22:00. The official results will be published on Thursday, but as soon as the polls close tomorrow night, exit polls by the television news channels will give an indication of how the next Knesset will look.
The Likud party continues up to the last minute to try to narrow the gap that opened up in the opinion polls last week between it and the Zionist Union led by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni. The Likud's efforts are directed at bringing back voters who have strayed to Habayit Hayehudi, led by Naftali Bennett, and the new Kulanu party, led by former Likud minister Moshe Kahlon. The indications in the past twenty-four hours are that the ruling party has succeeded in bringing back some voters at Bennett and Kahlon's expense.
After the surge that Kahlon registered last week, in the past couple of days his rise has been curbed by the Likud's "SOS" campaign, and also by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's declaration that Kahlon will be minister of finance in his next government regardless of how many Knesset seats his party wins in the election.
Habayit Hayehudi has also detected a certain weakening and a switch of votes to Likud. On the other hand, the Zionist Union is encouraged by the gap it opened up vis-a-vis Likud. The party's internal indicators confirm that Herzog continues to lead by a few seats, at the expense of Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid. If this trend continues tomorrow, it looks as though Lapid will not be the surprise package of the election as he was last time around, and that his momentum will be halted.
The Zionist Union leader received an endorsement this morning from former prime minister Ehud Barak, who was also minister of defense under Netanyahu from 2009 to 2012. "I have known Isaac Herzog for decades," Barak wrote, "He served as cabinet secretary in my government and as a minister alongside me in governments of which I was a member as leader of the Labor Party. Herzog is a person of good judgment, experienced and responsible. I have seen Herzog in security and diplomatic discussions of the most sensitive kind, at the end of which decisions were made. I am also aware of the high esteem that world leaders who have met him and talked with him have for Herzog. I trust Isaac Herzog. Israel's citizens can rely on him in any security matter on the agenda."
If Herzog leads Netanyahu by more than four seats after the election, President Reuven Rivlin will find it hard to give Netanyahu the task of forming a government, because of the fear that Netanyahu will lack legitimacy. A narrower gap will give Netanyahu an advantage because of the size of the right-wing block, which is larger than the left-wing block. In political circles the assessment is that if Herzog is asked to form a government he will succeed in doing so, but that he will encounter much difficulty, and will probably have to form a unity government with rotation of the premiership with Netanyahu.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 16, 2015
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