A poll appearing in the erev Shabbos 18 Cheshvan 5774 edition of Kol Ha’ir showed Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat enjoys a 20% lead over his opponent, Moshe Leon. The poll was conducted by Dr. Ariel Ayalon of Panel Project.
The poll shows Barkat with 47.6% of the vote as compared to Moshe Leon’s 28.2%. The Bnei Torah candidate, Chaim Epstein has 3.1% of the vote. What is significant however is the poll shows that 21.1% of voters remain undecided.
The poll adds that among chareidi voters, only 56.6% support Leon and 8.2% back Barkat. 30% remain undecided.
Regarding the vote for city council, Barkat’s success is far more limited as his list earns only 4 seats as is the case with the Yerushalayim list of Rachel Azariya. Yahadut Hatorah shows 8 seats, Shas 4 and Tov 1. Bayit Yehudi remains at 3 seats and United Jerusalem gets 1 seat, Hisorarus 3, Pisgat Ze’ev 1 and Likud/Beitenu 1.
Voters will place to slips into a ballot envelope on Tuesday, 18 Cheshvan, one for the head of the municipality and the second for the city council list.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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2 Responses
A poll reported in Sunday’s HaMevaser shows the gap at 3-4% with 16.9% undecided, a very different story from this one. One wonders if forces affiliated with Birkat are rigging polls to try to discourage Leon’s supporters from going to vote, which is unlikely to happen since they’ll still go to vote for lists for the city council.
If a significant majority of Ashkenazi charedim rally for Leon, which is likely to happen, then given the greater voting discipline and turnout of charedim it will probably be a close race. While non-charedim are still the majority of Jews in Jerusalem if Barkat can’t get them to the polls in sufficient numbers he may still lose the election.
And let’s not forget the huge Arab population of Jerusalem which has little reason to love Barkat and which may well prefer a religious and Sephardi mayor, especially one who owes his allegiance to Deri. In the past they have not voted in large numbers in municipal elections but they can easily hand a victory to Leon.
I seriously doubt that the real results will look anything like what this poll predicts.