A survey published last week finds that half of Israelis plan to vote for the same party as they did in the previous 2021 elections, with some 25% undecided. According to the survey by the Israel Democracy Institute’s Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research, despite the fluidity, only some 6% say they will vote for a party in a different bloc. The last four elections have largely focused on a division between those who support far-right Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu and those who oppose him.
MK Ofer Cassif (Hadash-Joint List) during an electoral rally in Tel-Aviv, Wednesday, August 31, 2022 (Photo: Zo Haderech)
When the Jewish vote is broken down, 78 percent of those supporting opposition parties intend to vote for the same party again, while just 43.5 percent of coalition voters said that they plan to vote for the same party.
Breaking down the voting intentions of Arab respondents by voting pattern at the last elections reveals that the majority of those who voted for the Joint List at the last elections reported that they will vote for it again this time around (61%). By contrast, only a minority of Ra’am Islamic party voters, albeit a large minority (45%), said that they will vote the same way at the upcoming elections. Furthermore, 15% of those who voted Ra’am last time stated that they will vote for the Joint List at the upcoming elections, but almost no swing (just 1%) in the other direction (from the Joint List to Ra’am). A large majority of Arab interviewees who voted for Zionist parties at the last elections said that they will vote the same way again this time (75%), but it should be remembered that less than 20% of Arabs-Palestinian in Israel voted for such parties.
Another survey finds that half of Israelis are firmly opposed to racist MK Itamar Ben Gvir serving as a government minister. According to a television poll, amid a rise in support for the fascist lawmaker. Asked if they would want Ben Gvir to be a minister, 48 percent of the respondents to the Channel 13 news poll said no, as opposed to 27% who said yes. Another 17% said they don’t care, and the remaining 8% didn’t know.
Ben Gvir, who heads the racist Otzma Yehudit party and is a disciple of the late racist rabbi Meir Kahane, last week reached a deal to run in the upcoming elections with fellow far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism. Netanyahu, who is seeking to return to power in the November 1 vote, helped broker the deal.
The TV survey forecast Netanyahu’s opposition right-wing religious bloc, which includes the joint Smotrich-Ben Gvir slate, would win 59 seats, two short needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. Parties that back the outgoing government picked up 56 seats in the poll, while the opposition Joint List of Hadash and Arab parties got five to six seats.
The full Israel Democracy Institute’s survey:
https://en.idi.org.il/articles/45839
Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=30512
Source: Communist Party of Israel