Did they change the direction of the wind? Yamina chairman Ayelet Shaked and chairman of Derech Eretz Yoaz Hendel Just the other day they announced the establishment of a united party called the Zionist Spirit, which will run in the elections for the 25th Knesset. According to the “Maariv-Sofah Shavuot” poll, the new union is bearing fruit and the “Zionist Spirit” party succeeds, albeit with difficulty, in the percentage of the block – and affects the general picture of mandates.
“The Zionist Spirit”: Shaked and Handel run together; Yeshiva under Netanyahu is not ruled out
Shaked and Handel did not turn their backs on knitwear, the sector has long been out of touch with them opinion
According to the survey conducted by the Panels Politics Institute under the management of Menachem Lazar, if the elections for the 25th Knesset were held today – this is how the distribution of mandates would look: the Likud party led by Netanyahu continues to be the largest party with 35 stable mandates. Yesh Atid led by Yair Lapid, on the other hand, loses a mandate and drops to 23 compared to the previous poll.
Blue and White-The New Hope, led by Benny Gantz and Gideon Sa’ar, continues to lose its power and drops from 12 to 11 mandates as the votes shift to the Zionist spirit. Religious Zionism, where the internal skirmish between Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir continues, remains with 10 mandates. Shas led by Aryeh Deri with 8 mandates, Torah Judaism led by Moshe Gafni with 6, and the joint list led by Ayman Odeh with 6 are also unchanged. In contrast, Yisrael Beitenu led by Avigdor Lieberman loses a mandate in the current poll and drops to 5.
The situation at the bottom of the poll should turn on a bright red light in the Labor Party. Merav Michaeli strongly opposes a joint run with Meretz. The figure obtained in the poll will perhaps cause her to reconsider, since the Labor Party under her leadership drops this week from 5 to 4 mandates – the same number of mandates as the little sister Meretz. Ream led by Mansor Abbas is also left this week with 4 mandates. Far below the blocking percentage: the Economic Party led by Prof. Yaron Zelicha and the Jewish Home Party led by Yossi Brodani.
The aforementioned surprise comes from the direction of the Zionist Spirit Party, which has just been established. She receives 3.3% in the survey and succeeds, albeit with great difficulty, in the percentage of blocking and has 4 mandates. The blocking percentage is 3.25%. This result affects the entire picture of the mandates: blue and white-the new hope passes as a mandate to the Zionist spirit. The entry of a new party into the mandate picture results in a redistribution of the votes, and it leaves the Netanyahu bloc with 59 mandates – as in the previous poll.
In the bloc of coalition parties, they fear a scenario in which Shaked and Handel will help transfer votes to Netanyahu’s bloc and allow him to cross the 61 barrier, but Shaked stated the other day that they are “firmly opposed to a narrow government of Netanyahu or the left,” and will work to establish a “broad national Zionist government” without lean on an Arab party.
It should be remembered that Blue and White-the New Hope also declares its intention to form a broad government headed by Benny Gantz, so that the Lapid bloc has shrunk and now stands at 40 mandates for Yesh Atid, Israel Beitenu, Havoda, Meretz and Ra’am, compared to the Netanyahu bloc – 59, while Between Blue and White-HaTikva New 11, the Joint List 6 and the Zionist Spirit 4.
The survey was attended by 701 respondents, who are a representative sample of the adult population in the State of Israel aged 18 and over, 616 Jews and 85 Arabs. The survey was conducted on July 27-28, 2022. The maximum sampling error in this survey is 4.2%.