In response to threats by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to topple the coalition, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told Israel Radio “that while I do not wish to hold elections today, if that will be the reality I am not afraid of the outcome”.
It appears the prime minister read the latest Yisrael HaYom poll which questions the outcome if elections were held today.
In the race for prime minister, the incumbent would earn 29.1% of the vote against Kadima’s Shaul Mofaz with 4.6%.
The poll commissioned by the newspaper was carried out by New Wave Research involving 500 adult residents representing a cross section of the population. Margin of error is +/- 4.5%.
The following is a list of how many seats in the 120-seat Knesset would be earned by the different parties. The second number is the current Knesset status of the party.
Likud (31/27), Labor (17/8), Yisrael Beitenu (14/15), Kadima (13/28), Yair Lapid (12/-), Shas (9/11), Yahadut HaTorah (5/5), Meretz (4/3), Hadash (4/4), HaBayit HaYehudi (3/3), Ra’am-Ta’al (3/4), Balad (3/3) and Ichud HaLeumi (2/4).
The poll does not list the Atzma’ut Party, the breakaway from Labor that is headed by Defense Minister Ehud Barak which has five seats in the current Knesset.
The outcome concurs with the political analysts who say Shas’ Eli Yishai is particularly opposed to elections today, aware of the growing popularity of Aryeh Deri and the fact that his party would lose footing in Knesset.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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3 Responses
Can someone explain to me how a study of 500 people can give an accurate poll on a keneset that has 120 seats?
So what would an election accomplish, unless Netanyahu feels he’ll lose ground by next year. I believe he needs a majority of the kenesset to call a new election at this time.
proud orthodox jew, the 500 people constitute a sample of the Israeli population. The statistics theory goes that if the sample was selected randomly, the sample is a true representation of the entire population and the findings from this sample can be extrapolated to the entire population.