ToI poll: Eisenkot opens up big lead on Netanyahu, but both blocs short of majority

A new Times of Israel/Zman Yisrael poll shows Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar party leading Likud 26-20, with the anti-Netanyahu bloc at 54 seats and the pro-Netanyahu bloc at 49, both short of a 61-seat majority. Ofer Winter's People of Israel party falls short of the electoral threshold at 2.8%. The poll surveyed 500 respondents with a ±4.4% margin of error.

A new poll published by The Times of Israel's sister site Zman Yisrael on Thursday shows opposition frontrunner Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar party opening a significant lead over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud, 26 seats to 20. The anti-Netanyahu bloc of Jewish-led parties stands at 54 seats, while the pro-Netanyahu bloc holds 49 — both short of the 61-seat majority needed in the 120-seat Knesset. Arab parties would win 13 seats, and the nonaligned Reservists party would enter with four. The poll also shows Ofer Winter's right-wing People of Israel party falling short of the 3.25% electoral threshold at 2.8%, a development that could affect the pro-Netanyahu camp's seat count. Last week's poll gave the anti-Netanyahu bloc 55 seats and the pro-Netanyahu camp 51. The survey was conducted on October 14 and 15 by Yossi Tatika of Tatika Research & Media in collaboration with the Adgenda panel, with 500 respondents and a ±4.4% margin of error. The poll was published a day after a Channel 13 survey that gave the Netanyahu bloc 51 seats versus 50 for Eisenkot's bloc, with Yashar at 20 and Likud at 18 in that poll. The article notes that horse-race polls are frequent in the run-up to elections and are not seen as highly reliable individually, but can serve as a general gauge of the political climate when taken together.