Israeli Elections

I've Been Thinking:

Israeli elections are around the corner, scheduled to take place on January 22nd. Conventional wisdom has it that the Likud Israel Beiteynu party will win the most seats.

But the most recent polling is telling another story. All three recent polls show that the newly combined party is slipping. It is slipping so far down that the polls are now only giving Likud Israel Beiteynu 33 seats.
Of the 120 Knesset seats, right now the polls are giving the left bloc about 43 seats and the right bloc about 47 seats. The Ashkenazi Hareidi party appears stable at 6 seats and the Sefardi Hareidi party is showing 11.
All three Arab parties combined, Taal Hadash and Balad, also come to 11 seats.

Of the 43 on the left, Labor has 17, Hatuna combined with Yesh Atid gets 11 and Meretz gets 5.

The big winner is Habayit Hayehudi which is a revamp of the old National Religious Party (NRP). It is polling at 15 and is grabbing voters from Likud.

That only leaves 2 seats open for play.

A month ago I assumed that Likud would walk away with this election with a huge plurality. I must revise my estimate. Likud Israel Beiteynu will still be the largest party, but not by as much as I originally thought. I had also thought that Labor had seen its last days. Now it looks like Habayait Hayehudi will be the third largest party in the next Knesset and that Labor has new life and will once again come in second.

The older parties have been reinvented. Their new incarnations are grabbing voters.

Micah@MicahHalpern

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