Forget the noise in the polls: 10 mandates are still waiting to decide
The small ups and downs of the parties are mostly noise. The truly important sound comes from the Israelis who move between the blocs and hold enough votes to change the election picture. And how do the undecided behave in the end?
Let's imagine your name is Batya, and when asked, "What defines your positions most accurately?", you answer, "Center-right." Of the five options presented to you, this is the one that seems correct. You are probably an employee, with an average salary, in most cases traditional but not religious, or secular.
Already in the previous elections, you had a dilemma: a fifth of Israelis like you voted for Likud, but a tenth voted for the National Unity Party or Yesh Atid, and another close to that for the Religious Zionism party.
So you don't belong to a distinct party camp. In these elections, you tend in a third of cases to Yahad! or Beyahad. In another tenth of cases — to Avigdor Lieberman. Voters of your type have almost disappeared from the camp of supporters of Religious Zionism, but there are still those among you who support Likud — about half compared to the previous time.
You are the voter who will decide where Israel goes after the elections. In very many cases, you are still debating which bloc to vote for (32%), or simply don't know who you will vote for (22%). You are tempted by the idea of a broad unity government or a broad Zionist government. You oppose the exemption from military service for the Haredim. You oppose the inclusion of an Arab party in the coalition. You are debating the matter of the judicial reform. You want a commission of inquiry to be established for the October 7 massacre.
What else do you want? That the state be managed well. Seven out of ten women like you say that this is more important to them than "that the people with the right positions be in power." This, of course, does not mean that you want people with the wrong opinions in power. There is a limit to what you will agree to accept in power.
And every morning, when you ask yourself where this limit is, you mark it again. For example: if there is no choice and you have to choose between United Torah Judaism and Ra'am — two parties you don't want in power — you will probably choose United Torah Judaism. With difficulty, with reservations, with a feeling of bitterness. But that will be the choice.
Your problem is the political reality. If it is possible to establish a broad unity government under Gadi Eizenkot — your political problem will be solved. But for this to happen, there must be enough parties that agree to enter such a government, and that are not ideologically unbearable.
And this is exactly where the difficulty lies. Four out of ten women like you rule out sitting with the Democrats in the coalition. The meaning is almost clear: either Likud is inside, or the Haredi parties are inside, or there is no possibility to form a coalition.
Likud — this is no longer news, it is an assessment — will not rush to enter Eizenkot's coalition. The Haredi parties have a known price — which you don't want to pay. So on the day after the elections, you will have to deal with the exact same question, only without the influence power of a voter: how to form a coalition that implements your policy, which apparently has an Israeli majority that supports it, without including parties you can't stand, or whose price of participation in the governing system you are not willing to pay. By the way, you have an answer to this too: I don't know.
Ruling out and considering
Every party has potential. Example: if there are 25% of voters in Israel who theoretically would consider voting for Likud, it does not mean that Likud will get 25%, but that it has potential for such a maximum, from which it will realize a part.
The question of which part is very significant, because while what is above the ceiling is not important, what is below is what the competition is about. Out of the 25% theoretical who consider Likud, many consider other parties. That is — they consider Likud, but also Yisrael Beiteinu, Shas, or Yahad!. Every party struggles with certain parties for the segment of voters that considers both.
In recent weeks, we examined whether voters would consider voting for different parties, or if they would rule out different parties outright. Do they have any openness to consider a specific party, even if they currently tend towards another, and which parties do they have no openness to consider, no matter what arguments are offered to them.
In general, most parties have more people ruling them out than considering them. A very large proportion of voters in Israel are not willing to hear about Otzma Yehudit. 39% of Jewish voters marked a ruling out of the party. If you add to these also a large majority of Arabs, it turns out that about half of the voters in Israel actively rule out the party. They not only do not consider it (21% are willing to consider it), but they announce in advance: don't waste your time.
Among the main parties that will enter the Knesset, Yahad! is the one whose balance is the most positive. Relatively few rulings out (24% of Jews), relatively much potential (34% of Jews). This means that the party is still far from realizing its potential, which is around 35 mandates.
The mobile market
Almost everything we see in the polls now is noise. Likud and the other coalition parties receive in most polls between 48 and 52 mandates. This is noise. If last week you saw a poll with 48 and this week with 52 — this is noise. Why? Because if you delve into the data, you will discover, almost always, that there is a non-substantial reason for the change: an Arab party that gets another mandate, or a party that dives a little below the electoral threshold.
As long as the campaign picture does not become clear — this will happen in a little more than a month, when the final lists are submitted — we will continue to hear noise. Of course, it will stop being noise if the coalition starts to climb to 56 or 59, or crashes to 45. But as long as it wobbles back and forth in the area I defined, we are in the noise stage.
The noise, if you listen, allows you to hear here and there also a sound. Like the continuous sound of the decline of the Beyahad party, of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid. This is not noise, because it is possible to identify a trend and it is also possible to explain it. Bennett is not the bloc's candidate for prime minister — so strategic voters prefer Eizenkot over him. If Chili Tropper and Yoaz Hendel pass the electoral threshold, someone has to go down, and Bennett is a natural victim.
And another sound: in a poll we published a week ago, Ra'am received more seats than Hadash-Ta'al. This is the sound of an Arab public that is not satisfied with the fact that its politicians continue to fight for seats instead of uniting. Pay attention to the gap between a scenario without unification — Hadash-Ta'al at 4 — and a scenario after unification — 8. This is a difference between 9 mandates for the Arab parties and 13. A big difference, which will greatly affect the chance of any bloc to reach 61 seats without the Arabs.
And another sound: this is the constant sound that can be seen in the graph. The sound of "we haven't decided." Not in the sense of "we haven't decided if we will vote for the Democrats or for Eizenkot," but "we are in between." In the graph, we called it "mobile market." The votes of those who will decide the elections. It can be seen that these are quite stable votes in seven weeks of polls for News 13.
