Poll: Likud 25, Yamina 19, Gideon Sa’ar 17

First poll after Gideon Sa’ar announces formation of new party shows him in third place with 17 seats, denying Netanyahu a majority.

By David Rosenberg, INN Dec 09 , 2020 7:51 AM

The first poll conducted since former minister and ex-Likud MK Gideon Sa’ar announced his plans to form a new party to challenge Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu shows the new faction winning an impressive 17 seats, making it the third largest party in the Knesset.

The poll was conducted by Panels Politics, with the data collected by Panel4All from an internet survey Tuesday night, and published Wednesday morning by Radio 103FM.

If new elections were held today, the poll found, the Likud would plummet from its current 36 seats to 25 mandates, down from 29 in last Friday’s Panels Politics poll.

Blue and White, which has 15 seats and received 10 seats in the previous poll, sank to 6 seats in Wednesday’s poll, its lowest position in any poll.

Yesh Atid-Telem, which polled at 18 seats last Friday, fell to 14 seats in the new poll, while the far-left Meretz tumbled from six seats to five.

The Joint Arab List held steady at 11 seats, the same as last week’s poll but down from the 15 seats it won in March.

Shas is projected to retain its nine seats, while United Torah Judaism is expected to remain at seven.

The rightist Yamina faction slides from 22 seats in the last poll to 19 mandates with Gideon Sa’ar’s party in the race.

Labor, Gesher, Otzma Yehudit, Derech Eretz, and Jewish Home all failed to clear the 3.25% electoral threshold.

Sa’ar’s new party would draw from both the right-wing and left-wing blocs, with the Right falling from 67 seats in the previous poll to 60 seats, and the left-wing – Arab bloc falling from 45 seats to 36.