Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has never needed Yamina leader Naftali Bennett more. The reason: The only way the prime minister will be able to form a coalition government is if the Yamina party head joins the right-wing bloc, this according to the results of a new i24News-Israel Hayom poll.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
According to the poll, which was carried out by the Maagar Mochot research institute, if elections were held today, Netanyahu's Likud party would garner 29 Knesset seats. With 16 seats, Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid would be the second largest party. Gideon Sa'ar's New Hope party would receive just 13 seats, while Yamina would garner 10.
According to the poll, the first to be carried out since the parties submitted their slates to the Central Elections Committee, any movement in party alignment could tip the scales when it comes time to form a coalition. While Netanyahu's right-wing bloc isn't predicted to garner the 61 Knesset seats required to form a coalition, neither is his rival. Nor is there a majority for the enactment of legislation targeting Netanyahu. All this could fast track Israel's path to a fifth round of elections. This time around, every single vote cast could make the difference.
Neither the Right nor the Left will see votes go to waste as a result of their being cast for parties that fail to pass the minimum electoral threshold of 3.25%. On the Right, the Religious Zionist Party is set to gain five seats. On the Left, Blue and White, Meretz, and Labor are all expected to pass the electoral threshold with five seats each.
The two parties predicted not to make it into the Knesset are Yaron Zelekha's New Economic Party and Mansour Abbas' Ra'am, the latter of which recently split from the Joint Arab List. Both these parties have been bleeding support due to polls predicting they will fail to make it into the Knesset for quite some time.
Haredi parties United Torah Judaism and Shas are expected to garner seven and nine Knesset seats, respectively. The Joint Arab List is predicted to receive 10. Yisrael Beytenu is set to receive six Knesset seats.
In total, the right-wing bloc including Yamina is expected to garner 60 seats. That's not a coalition, but it doesn't put the right-wing parties in the opposition either. What it does do is sentence them to political limbo.
Asked which political leader was best suited to the role of prime minister, 44% of respondents said Netanyahu, followed by Lapid, at 19%. Seventeen percent of respondents said Sa'ar was best suited for the role, compared to Bennett with 15%.
At 44%, a plurality of respondents said Israel would head to a fifth election in the coming months, while 34% said the parties would succeed in forming a stable coalition government. Twenty-two percent of respondents said they didn't know.
With Israel's vaccination campaign slowing in recent weeks, the poll also examined Israelis' views on government plans to incentivize vaccination against the coronavirus and penalize those who abstain from inoculation. A majority of respondents, 59%, said they support the plan in full, while 35% said they supported incentivizing vaccination only. Six percent said they were in favor of penalizing those who didn't get the jab. While Israelis aged 75 and over supported the carrot-and-stick approach, just 36% of those aged 18 to 30 were in favor.
Asked what effect Netanyahu's criminal trial would have on voting, 63% said it would have no impact, while 7% said it would bolster their support for the prime minister. Seventeen percent said the trial was liable to deter them from voting for Netanyahu.
The poll was carried out among 505 respondents, comprising a representative sample of Israelis 18 and over, and has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
