JERUSALEM — October 15, 2026

A newly obtained audio recording reveals a serious irregularity in an automated election polling system, raising questions about the accuracy of these polls ahead of Israel’s October 27 Knesset elections.

The recording, published alongside this article, captures a respondent attempting to select HaTzibur HaCharedi, the new political party headed by Moti Leitner, only to discover that the automated polling system will not accept the selection. The recording provides direct evidence of a polling system failing to register a respondent’s stated political preference.

The incident raises serious concerns about the reliability of election surveys and the possibility that support for HaTzibur HaCharedi is being grossly underrepresented in published polling results. If the problem documented in the recording extends to other respondents, as is likely (since it is rare that a system only glitches with one specific respondents phone number), it could result in polling figures that fail to accurately reflect the party’s actual support.

If respondents who intended to choose HaTzibur HaCharedi were systematically unable to do so, the party’s actual support would be substantially higher than published polls indicate, particularly since Haredi voters are reached mainly through this kind of survey and would have been the ones most affected by the “glitch”.

A telephone poll is, in practice, a poll aimed at Haredi voters. That the one party built to compete for those voters could not be selected in such a poll makes it difficult to attribute the omission to an oversight. It suggests that a survey directed at the Haredi community was constructed without the option of HaTzibur HaCharedi at all. The central question is whether this was an isolated technical malfunction or, is it evidence of a broader problem affecting how support for HaTzibur HaCharedi is measured?

The recording establishes that a respondent was unable to register their intended preference. However the extent of the issue, its cause, and whether published polling results were affected remain to be determined.

With less than two weeks until Election Day, the incident raises urgent questions about the transparency and accuracy of election polling, and warrants an immediate explanation from the polling company responsible.

The audio recording is available below.