A new survey published on Sunday by researchers at Tel Aviv University found that 87% of Israeli Arab voters would be in favor of either joining the government, or supporting one from the outside, after the following election.
The survey found that around 46% of the respondents expressed support for seeing an Arabic party join any government to be formed after the elections, while 18% said they would only support joining a center-left coalition.
Some 21.3% of respondents said they would support an Arabic party supporting the government from the outside in exchange for benefits for the country's Arab sector, while only 13% answered that they would not support an Arabic party joining the government or supporting it from the outside under any circumstances.
Whether enough Jewish parties would be willing to sit with Arabic parties in order to form a government however, remains a different question altogether.
The study found a slight decrease in the expected turnout of Arab voters since the last election, though still relatively high, standing now at 59.7%, down from 64.8% last March.
However, when compared with the predicted turnout found in November with the same methodology, a very significant rise can be seen, hinting that participation rates may continue to rise and be higher than expected on election day.
Ayman Odeh's Joint List is still projected to be the main recipient of Arab votes this election, with the survey predicting that it will win 8.3 seats, followed by Mansour Abbas' Ra'am Party, which is predicted to gain 4 seats from Arab votes, enough to clear the electoral threshold.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party would receive a surprising 1.6 seats from Arab voters, while Nitzan Horowitz' Meretz, Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid and Mohammad Darawshe's Ma'an Party are all expected to receive hald a seat each.
Netanyahu continued to do surprisingly well in the survey, as Arab voters also found him to be most qualified candidate for Prime Minister (24.9%), followed by Ahmad Tibi (14.3%); Yair Lapid (13.9%); and Ayman Odeh (11.7%).
Mansour Abbas, Gideon Sa’ar and Benny Gantz all fared much more poorly with 4.7%, 4.6% and 2.4% respectively. Meanwhile, 10% of the respondents said they feel that there is no qualified politician for the position of prime minister.
According to the survey, the most important issue for the Arab public in the coming election is the implementation of a government plan to combat violence in the Arab sector, with an overwhelming 58.6% of respondents saying so.
The survey also found that an overwhelming majority of 82.5% of respondents are in favor of Arab women playing a central role in the political arena, which is reflected in the relatively historically high placement of Arab women in both Arab and left wing Jewish parties this coming election.
The survey was conducted by the Konrad Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, in conjunction with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. It was carried out by Stat-Net Research Institute under the direction of Yousef Makladeh and included 501 participants with a sample error of 4.4%.