A new Israeli election poll released Thursday evening shows former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party leading Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud by three Knesset seats, while the bloc seeking to replace the current government has gained ground but still faces significant obstacles to assembling a governing majority.

The survey, published by Israel Hayom less than two weeks before the October 27 Knesset elections, gives Eisenkot’s Yashar party 24 seats in the 120-member Knesset, compared with 21 for Likud.

The results place Eisenkot’s party at the top of the individual party rankings, although the distribution of seats among the various political blocs suggests that forming a new government could remain difficult regardless of which party receives the most mandates.

According to the poll, Naftali Bennett’s Beyachad party would receive 12 seats, making it the third-largest faction in the Knesset. It is followed by Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit with nine seats.

The Democrats, led by Yair Golan, are projected to win eight seats, as are Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu and the Arab Joint List.

Among the chareidi parties, both United Torah Judaism and Shas are projected to receive seven seats apiece, giving the two factions a combined 14 mandates.

Religious Zionism, led by Bezalel Smotrich, is projected to secure six seats, while the Arab Ra’am party would receive five.

The survey also assigns four seats to the Reservists and Economist list, placing it at the minimum threshold for representation in the Knesset.

The poll places the opposition bloc at 52 seats, an increase of two from the previous Israel Hayom survey, while the parties currently aligned with Netanyahu’s coalition receive a combined 50 mandates.

The Arab parties are projected to receive 14 seats, while the four seats allocated to the Reservists and Economist list are counted separately from the two main political blocs.

Although the opposition’s 52 seats fall nine short of the 61 required for a Knesset majority, adding the Arab parties would bring the combined total to 66. That calculation, however, does not establish that the parties would agree to form or support a government together, particularly given Lieberman’s opposition to relying on Arab factions.

A closer examination of the results shows that Eisenkot’s party has gained two seats since the previous survey, while Bennett’s party has lost one. United Torah Judaism also drops by one mandate, as does the Reservists and Economist list.

The original Israel Hayom figures put the Joint List at nine seats, one more than the eight reported in the subsequent summary, bringing the combined Arab-party total to 14.

The survey was conducted by the Kantar polling institute on October 14 and 15 among 551 respondents, with a reported maximum margin of error of 4.2 percentage points.

A separate poll published Thursday by Zman Yisrael presented a somewhat different picture, projecting 26 seats for Eisenkot’s Yashar party, 20 for Likud, and 11 for Bennett’s Beyachad. That survey allocated 54 seats to the opposition, 49 to Netanyahu’s bloc, 13 to the Arab parties, and four to the unaligned list.

{Matzav.com}