Israel elections: Likud lead grows, as Sa’ar keeps falling

The poll predicted 30 seats for Likud, up from 27 last week. All of Netanyahu’s challengers fell since last week’s poll, with Yesh Atid dropping from 20 seats to 19, Yamina from 11 to 10 and New Hope from 10 to a record low of only eight seats.

Gideon Sa’ar’s party, which at one point trailed Likud by only five seats, is now in a four-way tie for fourth place, with the Joint List, Shas and Yisrael Beytenu.

The poll predicted six seats for United Torah Judaism, five each for Labor, the Religious Zionist Party and Blue and White and four for Meretz and Ra’am United Arab List.

Both the pro-Netanyahu and anti-Netanyahu blocs were predicted to win 49 seats, which would not be enough to form a coalition, even with the ten seats of Yamina, which could join either side. The only way to form a coalition, according to the poll, is with the support of Ra’am. 

The poll of 1,001 respondents representing a statistical sample of the adult Israeli population, was taken Thursday and had a margin of error of 3.2%.