Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party is continuing to regain some of the political ground it lost on October 7, according to a new Maariv poll, but National Unity party head Benny Gantz remains the frontrunner to form a new government if elections were held today.
The poll, conducted April 10-11, saw Likud gain two mandates, from 17 to 19, relative to the last iteration of the same survey, conducted on April 4. The gain came at the expense of the National Unity party, which lost two mandates, from 32 to 30.
Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism, and the far-right Otzma Yehudit parties all gained one mandate, landing at 12, 7, and 10 seats respectively.
On opposite sides of the political spectrum, both Religious Zionism and the Labor Party have slipped beneath the minimum threshold to enter the Knesset.
Asked whom voters support for the prime ministership, a plurality (47%) pointed to Benny Gantz, a one percent decrease compared to the previous poll, while Netanyahu’s support rose slightly, from 33% to 35%.
The increase in support for Netanyahu appears to be found among previous Likud voters who in earlier polls had thrown their lot in elsewhere. 70% of those who voted for Likud in 2022 say that Netanyahu is suitable for the prime ministership, compared to 64% in a previous poll.
Voters divided on the current stage of the war
Asked, amid news of the IDF’s withdrawal from southern Gaza and the scaling down of troops in northern and central Gaza, what stage the war appears to be in, 15% of respondents said that the war in the Gaza Strip is over. Another 30% said that the war is not over yet, but is nearing its end, while 44% said that it has not ended at all. 11% said they don’t know.
Answers to that question appear to track respondents’ age and place of residency— those who reside in Israel’s south were less likely to view the war as over or nearing its end, while the older respondents were, the more likely they were to see the war as coming to a close.
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