According to a new opinion poll conducted by Direct Polls, if snap elections were held, the Yamina party, which currently boasts the Prime Minister, as well as the Minister of Interior and the Minister of Religious Affairs, would not pass the electoral threshold of the required 3.25% of the votes.

Should the government fail to gain enough support for the critical vote on the state budget this week, which must be passed by the Knesset no later than this Thursday, then the government would automatically collapse and a snap election would be held. The current government holds a narrow majority of 61 seats in the Knesset, over the opposition which has 59 seats.

According to the poll which was conducted on Sunday, Yamina would only gain 2.9 percent of the vote and would fail to reach the threshold, thus, they would not make it into the next Knesset. Yamina won seven seats in the March 2021 elections and managed to become the ruling party of a coalition ‘unity’ government that brought together parties from the far-left and the Zionist-right in order to oust former Prime Minister Netanyahu from power.

The poll showed that the Likud party would gain more seats than it currently has, totaling 35, but would still fall shy of forming a coalition government.

The Yesh Atid party, the second largest in the Knesset currently, also gained in strength and was predicted to win 20 seats as opposed to its current 17.

the Charedi parties stayed fairly even with Shas projected to win nine seats, while the United Torah Judaism party rose from seven to eight.

The Blue and White party fell from eight seats to seven, while Yisrael Beiteinu is projected to receive the same seven it currently holds.

Labor was projected to win seven seats once again and the Religious Zionist party was expected to win one additional seat at seven. The poll showed that Meretz would drop down two seats as would the New Hope party and both would receive only 4 seats.

The Arab parties of the Joint Arab List were projected to win seven seats, one more than it currently has, and the Ra’am party gained one and would win five seats.

Thus, Netanyahu’s bloc of Likud, Shas, UTJ, and Religious Zionism would gain 59 seats. The left-wing Arab bloc of Yesh Atid, Blue and White, Labor, Meretz, Joint Arab List, Ra’am would gain 50, and the right-wing non-affiliated parties of Yisrael Beiteinu and New Hope would have 11, thus making the forming of a government once again incredibly difficult.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)