Religious Zionist Party voters favor radical MK Itamar Ben-Gvir as party leader over hawkish Bezalel Smotrich and would give the former 13 Knesset seats, compared to 10 that the latter could secure, a Channel 13 News poll found Sunday.
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Ahead of the March 2021 elections, Ben-Gvir – who heads the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, joined forces with the radical Noam party. Polls predicted that the joint ticket would fail to cross the four-seat electoral threshold, prompting the two to join forces with Smotrich, whose Religious Zionist Party was predicted to win four Knesset seats at the time.
While Otzma Yehudit is a radical party that follows the Kahanist doctrine, Noam is an extremist religious-Zionist party that follows the teachings of Rabbi Zvi Yisrael Tau, co-founder and president of Yeshivat Har Hamor in Jerusalem. As such, Noam is known for its hardline anti-LGBTQ, anti-Reform positions.
Otzma Yehudit and Noam became factions within Religious Zionist Party and the joint slate won six Knesset seats.
Since the Nov. 1 elections were called Smotrich had remained mum on where he would again run with Ben-Gvir who, for his part, said he was open to it. "We haven't spoken it two weeks. I get the impression that Smotrich is not interested in a joint slate. That's his right and I won't say more on the issue," he told Israel Hayom last week.
Ben-Gvir, a radical far-right activist-turned-politician, has been trying to shed the image of a provocateur in the hope of appealing to a larger constituency.
According to the poll, were elections held at this time, Likud would win 34 seats, followed by Yesh Atid (22), Blue and White-New Hope (12), Religious Zionist Party (12), Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party Shas (8) Ashkenazi Haredi party United Torah Judaism (7) the Joint Arab List (6), Labor (6), Yisrael Beytenu (6), Meretz (5), and Ra'am (4).
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's Yamina party, now led by Ayelet Shaked, is not expected to cross the electoral threshold.
A breakdown of the data shows that these results would give the Center-Left bloc 54-55 seats and the right-wing bloc 59-60 seats, excluding the Joint Arab List, which is unlikely to join the coalition regardless of who heads it but could still endorse a lawmaker for the position of MK.
Asked who they believe is best suited to serve as prime minister, 45% of the respondents named Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu, 32% favored Prime Minister Yair Lapid, 15% said neither should be the prime minister, and 7% were undecided.
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