10 Responses

1. Israeli polls historically reflect a very strong establishment bias, perhaps reflecting the people doing the poll, or more likely reflecting the belief of those answering that the poll is being conducted by and for the “elite” and causing many people to give the answer the pollster wants to hear. Based on the poll, it appears that many people who were hareidim last election, will be anti-religious socialists the next – not likely. The polls overrepresent the secular left, and underrepresent religious and Sefardim.

2. the poll indicates that the religious are stopping to vote for the religious parties. they want politicians who will help the citiziens not politicians who will only help themselves.
   Also when the pollster calls, you can only answer once… as opposed to an actual election where there was actual voter fraud. vhamavin yovin

3. This cannot be accurate. I do not believe all Bayit Yehudi voters will repeat their vote.

4. #2– All Israeli polls show that Religious (and Sefardi) voters are switching to mainstream left-wing secular parties. They always have and probably always will. Its a consistent polling error. The Israeli media are dominated by the secular left, and people try to please the pollster (and note that many Israelis came from countries where bad things happen to you if you give wrong answers to the question of “do you support fearless leader”). Given that a 1% error in the Israeli system is the difference between triumph and utter defeat, their pre-election polls are very useless, and always have been. In America the results show a similar bias but its less pronounced since the media in America are more diffuse politically, and also a 1% error isn’t usually important in a “first past the post” system such as the US uses.

5. #2- Perhaps. But the only significant and fairly consistent drop in the polls is for Sha”s and they are probably primarily losing masorati voters – who supported Sha”s in the past not necessarily because they agreed with its politics but out of love and respect for harav Ovadia zt”l and because they saw a powerful, unified Sefardic party as a good thing for them and for Israel. With the passing of harav Ovadia zt”l and the subsequent fragmentation of Sha”s it cannot be surprising that some of these mesorati voters are considering moving their allegiance to parties that more closely reflect their personal political worldview. At the moment (and this may still be years before the next election) their inclination seems to be to move their support primarily to the Likud.

6. I think this poll should be ignored. There is no significant change in the Chareidii distribution. Hatenua and kadima will not exist next round. The bAyit yehudi will split between torani and non-torani.

7. Yahadut ha-Torah also lost. And if Shas people switch, they would go to Likud, rather than Meretz or Labor. The poll’s only characteristic was a consistent movement to the left, which is unlikely, and probably reflect traditional polling bias.

   Now that the ruling elites have told Shas voters they must either give up Torah or Zionism, it is hard to predict how they will behaive, except that most of them chose to reject the Likud before. Also, by joining Shas they subscribed to the Shas narrative that the seculars focused on destroying the Sefardi religious tradition as a method of subjugating the Sefardi population – and thus they might react in the opposite direction to the current move focused on closing down Sefardi yeshivot.

8. so where is aguda/degel haTorah in this??

9. “I do not believe all Bayit Yehudi voters will repeat their vote.”

   They have done well for their core constituency, which is what matters in Israel’s electoral system.

10. Why does everyone keeps separating Sephardim from religious? The implication is that Sephardim are not religious which is grossly inappropriate and untrue. There are religious Sephardim and unfortunately there are Sephardim who like their Ashkenazic brethren have strayed from the path of our fathers. Especially at times like these we must stop this baseless hatred of our brothers and unite together.