The recent political mergers on the Rights and the decision by several political hopefuls to drop out of the March 23 electoral race have given the ruling Likud party a boost in the polls, but could edge longtime left-wing staple Meretz out of parliament, a poll released on Sunday predicted.
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Thirty-nine parties registered with the Central Election Committee ahead of next month's elections, but only 13 are seen as having realistic chances of getting into the 24th Knesset.
Ahead of the committee's Thursday deadline, the Center-Left Telem, Tnufa, Israelis, and Pensioners parties pulled out of the race, as none were projected to cross the mandatory four-seat electoral threshold and they were unable to form an alliance or carve out a merger with Labor.
Mergers on the Right fared better: Gesher leader MK Orly Levy-Abekasis merged with Likud and given a safe slot as no. 26 on its slate; national religious parties Yamina and Habayit Hayehudi joined forces; and the hawkish Religious Zionist Party and the far-Right Otzma Yehudit party said they would vie on one ticket, which also includes the radical ultra-Orthodox Noam faction that merged with Otzma Yehudit last week.
Prior to the mergers, none of the four smaller right-wing factions were projected to cross the electoral threshold.
These political plays have given the right-wing bloc more of a solid lead over the center-left bloc.
Sunday's Direct Polls survey projected that were elections held at this time, Likud would win 31 Knesset seats, followed by Yesh Atid (14), New Hope (14), Yamina (11), Yisrael Beytenu (9), Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party Shas (8), the Joint Arab List (7), Labor (7), and Ashkenazi Haredi party United Torah Judaism (7).
Just crossing the electoral threshold are the Religious Zionist Party, Blue and White, and Ra'am, with four seats each.
The poll predicted that Meretz and the Economic party would fall short of getting elected.
This is the first poll in which Meretz falls below the electoral threshold, having previously projected to win between four and six mandates.
These results give the right-wing bloc 50 seats and the Center-Left bloc 48 seats. Ra'am and Yamina could join either. Yamina leader Naftali Bennett had stated in the past that he seeks to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu although he has not ruled out joining a Likud-led government.
The Direct Polls survey was conducted by Shlomo Filber, on Feb 6-7. In included 2,067 eligible Israeli voters and held in Hebrew, Arabic and Russian, and has a statistical margin of error of 2.3 percentage points.
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