A new poll published Thursday posited that Benny Gantz's National Unity Party would win out over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud if elections were held today.
According to the poll, conducted by Panels Politics for Maariv, the National Unity Party would garner 29 mandates to Likud's 26. Overall, the current coalition would reduce to 52 seats while the opposition would grow to 68.
Were the Labor and Meretz parties to merge, the new poll determined that together they would receive a total of 8 seats.
A Labor-Meretz merger would also effectively eliminate the possibility that both parties fail to reach the requisite amount of votes for a seat in Knesset, which is what happened to the Meretz party in the latest round of elections.
The issue of prime ministership
The question of prime ministership maintains the same answer as previous polls: Benny Gantz is in the lead with 43% of respondents ranking him as their first choice for prime minister. 39% of respondents stated they would like Benjamin Netanyahu to continue in his current role.
According to the poll, 14% of Israelis who voted for the parties currently in the coalition hold Gantz in higher esteem than Netanyahu and would prefer him as prime minister.
Yesh Atid, Shas, United Torah Judaism, Chadash-Ta'al, Religious Zionism and Yisrael Beitenu all maintained their numbers of projected mandates from the last poll, which was conducted on May 24, 2023. Mansour Abbas' Ra'am party gained one seat, reaching a total of five, while Itamar Ben-Gvir's Otzma Yehudit lost a seat, leaving it at four. The Meretz party, which is not currently in government, lost a seat since the last poll and now has a projected four mandates.
The survey was conducted on a representative sample of the Israeli population over the age of 18 consisting of 506 respondents.