With the third Knesset election within a year exactly two weeks away, there has still been no shift in the political front line. If in the April 2019 election the final two weeks of the campaign saw a bloody display of negative campaigning and mutual smears, and in the September 2019 election campaigning just got going at this stage, the March 2019 round is still in deep sleep. The public is fed up, the politicians are fed up, and the media are fed up. A poll published by Channel 13 News yesterday evening shows a fairly similar picture to the one we have become accustomed to seeing over the past two months.
Benny Gantz's Blue & White party has managed to extend its lead over Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud by one seat, with 36 projected Knesset seats to Likud's 33, but in the average of recent polls it still leads by just two seats. The Joint Arab List scores fourteen seats in the Channel 13 poll; Labor-Gesher-Meretz and Yisrael Beitenu have eight seats each, and the remaining parties have seven each. The results of the average of recent polls are almost the same, plus or minus one seat here and there. If the actual results on election day look like this, we will once again be left without a clear-cut decision by Israel's electorate, and a unity government of Blue & White and Likud still looks like the only possibility..
The following are the numbers of Knesset seats that each party is projected to receive according to an average of five recently published polls:
Blue & White 35
Likud 33
Joint Arab List 13
Labor-Gesher-Meretz 9
Shas 8
United Torah Judaism 7
Yamina 7
Yisrael Beitenu 7
Otzma Yehudit 0.
The polls included are: Channel 13 News, February 17; Ysrael Hayom, February 14; Ma'ariv, February 14; Channel 12 News, February 13; Yisrael Hayom and i24 News, February 7. The total number of seats may not be 120, the actual number of seats in the Knesset, because of the averaging process.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on February 18, 2020
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