With Israel heading for the forth general election in two years, some of the final polls project a slim majority for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu’s party “Likud [is] projected to win 30-32 seats, and to clinch 60 along with declared and potential,” the Times of Israel reported on Friday citing the final polls. To win the election, Netanyahu and his allies will need 61 seats in the 120-member Knesset.
Other Israeli media outlets show Netanyahu-led coalition in a tie or slightly ahead of the opposition alliance. Given the slim margins projected in most of the polls, the election outcome remains too close to predict.
The Times of Israel summed up the projections of the final Israeli polls:
Final polls aired by Channel 12 and Channel 13 Friday ahead of Tuesday’s national election showed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the cusp of clinching a ruling majority as the race draws to a close, though he is still not guaranteed one. (…)
Both polls showed Likud and its religious allies at 60 seats, one seat short of a bare minimum majority in the 120-member Knesset. Potential support from the rogue Arab party Ra’am could take the premier over the top, but such an alliance is strongly opposed by the hard right.
Channel 12 showed Likud with 32 seats, its highest result in months; opposition leader Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid with 18; Naftali Bennett’s Yamina with 9; Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope with 9; the Joint List of majority Arab parties has 8; ultra-Orthodox Shas has 8; United Torah Judaism with 7; Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu with 7; and Labor at 6.
In its final projection, the Jerusalem Post saw the polls pointing towards a “deadlock” — with Netanyahu’s alliance falling short of a clear majority. “The final polls conducted before Election Day on Tuesday all suggested continued political deadlock, as neither the anti- nor the pro-Netanyahu blocs are expected to receive 61 seats in order to form a government,” the newspaper said.
A separate poll conducted jointly by the i24News TV channel and the Yisrael Hayom newspaper showed Netanyahu’s coalition and the opposition tied at 60 seats each.
The i24News reported details of their poll released on Friday:
The latest i24NEWS/Yisrael Hayom poll, which questioned 2,087 adults between March 16-18, showed Friday that both camps would gain 60 seats in the Knesset (Israel Parliament) — assuming that right-wing Naftali Bennett’s Yamina party would join a coalition headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu’s Likud would secure the top position as the largest party in parliament with 29, the poll showed.
Yesh Atid, led by Opposition Leader and politically-centered Yair Lapid, would come in second with 18 mandates.
In accordance with the Israel’s election campaign laws, no further polls will be release before the March 23 vote.
After serving as Israel’s prime minister for fifteen years, Netanyahu faces probably the toughest election of his political career.
Netanyahu’s main rival, Gideon Sa’ar, hired top operative of the U.S.-based Lincoln Project to ‘advise’ his campaign. Several of the Lincoln Project’s co-founders were roped in to target Netanyahu’s electoral base, a tactic similar to the one unsuccessfully applied by them to divide President Donald Trump’s Republican base in the U.S. election, media reports suggest.
The anti-Netanyahu camp was forced to distance itself from these operatives after a damning sexual harassments scandal engulfed the Lincoln Project in the run-up the election.
During his current tenure, Netanyahu oversaw a historic move towards peace with the Arab neighbors. The Abraham Accords brokered by President Trump established formal diplomatic ties between Israel, and the Arab Gulf States of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain. Several other Muslim countries moved towards normalizing relations with the Jewish State as part of the White House-backed initiative.
Under Netanyahu’s leadership, the former U.S. administration formally recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and as well as its sovereignty over the strategic Golan Height, strengthening Israel’s diplomatic standing in the world and ensuring its territorial security.
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