Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party continues to rise in the polls with the premier likely re-elected if elections were held today, a survey published by Channel 14 showed on Tuesday night.
Direct Polls, which accurately predicted the results of the Jewish state’s most recent general election in 2022, surveyed a representative sample of 472 Israeli adults on Oct. 13. (The margin of error is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points at a confidence level of 95%, Direct Polls said.)
If a vote were to be called now, Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party would secure 33 mandates out of the Israeli parliament’s 120, up two since the previous Direct Polls survey published on Sept. 29 and one more than it has held in the Knesset since the general election on Nov. 1, 2022.
Benny Gantz’s National Unity and Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu Party received the next most projected Knesset seats (15 each), followed by the Shas Party and the Democrats (10 each), Yesh Atid and United Torah Judaism (eight each), Otzma Yehudit (seven), Ra’am and Hadash-Ta’al (five each) and Religious Zionism (four).
The Likud Party has held 32 seats in the Knesset since the November 2022 election, in addition to the 32 seats held by Netanyahu’s right-wing and religious allies. The next national vote is scheduled for 2026 unless the Netanyahu-led government collapses and early elections are called.
While 60% of Israelis are dissatisfied with the government’s handling of the ongoing conflicts on the Jewish state’s southern and northern borders, the majority believes that early elections would hurt the war effort, according to a poll conducted by Direct Polls for JNS in July.
A total of 54% of respondents said a vote before the end of the fighting with Hamas in the south and Hezbollah to the north would “hurt” (9%) or be “very harmful"(45%) to Israel’s deterrence in the face of ongoing terrorist threats.
