Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud appears to have gained a slight edge over its main rival the Blue and White party ahead of the September 17 elections, according to the latest poll conducted by HOT media company.
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The poll, released on Tuesday, shows the ruling Likud leading with 33 potential Knesset seats over Blue and White’s 32.
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Blue and White leader Benny Gantz and Prime Minister Netanyahu
(צילום: מארק ישראל סלם, אלכס קולומויסקי)
The survey reveals if the next week’s elections were to be held today, the Joint List - a political alliance of the main Arab-dominated political parties in Israel - would get 10 seats, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu would get 9 seats.
Ayelet Shaked’s Yamina party, formerly known as United Right, would get 7 seats, the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party would also get 7 seats, which is on par with its Sephardic counterpart Shas.
The Democratic Union - an amalgam of the left-wing Meretz party, Ehud Barak's Israel Democratic Party and Labor defector Stav Shaffir - would get 6 seats, the Labor-Gesher union would receive 5 seats and Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) appears to barely inch over the electoral threshold with 4 potential seats.
The survey was conducted among 3,636 HOT subscribers with a representative sample of the overall Israeli population aged 18 and over. The maximum sampling error in the survey is -+1.6%.