Less Than 90 Days to Elections: Factors Still Confusing Public Opinion Polls

The 'Poll of Polls' by Globes returns. Israel is heading to elections, and we will accompany the campaign, bringing the most up-to-date polls from leading media outlets to examine who is strengthening, who is weakening, and who is hovering around the electoral threshold.

Current Data

Likud leads with 25 mandates, the party led by Gadi Eisenkot has 22, and 'Beyad' led by Naftali Bennett weakens to 12 mandates.

The other parties remain stable: The Democrats with 10; Yisrael Beiteinu with 9; Shas, United Torah Judaism, and Otzma Yehudit with 8 each; Hadash-Ta'al, Ra'am, and Religious Zionism with 5 each. The party of Yoaz Hendel and Chili Tropper passes the electoral threshold in most polls, but Blue and White led by Benny Gantz still remains below it.

Conclusions and Analysis

The opposition bloc, excluding Arab parties, still struggles to win a majority in the Knesset, settling for an average of 56 mandates in the polls (while Arab parties together receive 10).

Behind the numbers: The Maariv poll was the only one where the opposition without Arab parties wins a majority of 61 mandates. In most other polls (Channels 11, 12, 13, and Maariv), the entire opposition bloc (including Arab parties) wins at least 68 mandates. Only in the Channel 14 poll does it stop at 58 mandates, with the coalition winning a majority of 62.

The polls are also divided regarding the 'Beit Tzioni' party of Chili Tropper and Yoaz Hendel. While in four polls it passes the threshold (reaching 5 mandates on Channel 13), in the Channel 14 and i24news polls, it remains below it. Similarly, Hadash-Ta'al varies between 4 and 7 mandates, while the polls are unanimous regarding Ra'am (led by Mansour Abbas), which receives 5 mandates in all of them.

The Undecided Factor

Last week, Globes wrote about the 'black hole' of the polls: the 10% to 15% of the public who have not yet decided who to vote for. Numerically, this group could be worth 20 mandates.

"The question is how the undecided distribute themselves: do they scatter randomly among the parties, or are they debating between different parties within the same bloc?" the analysis explains.

According to the 'Ulpan Shishi' poll on Channel 12, 55% of the undecided tend to vote for a candidate who is not Benjamin Netanyahu (potentially channeling 8 mandates to the opposition), 16% favor Netanyahu, and 29% replied that they do not know which bloc they tend to support.