In the latest "Globes" poll of polls leading up to the Knesset election on October 27, the Likud party, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has retaken the lead, with 25 seats (which compares with 32 seats in the current Knesset). Next comes Yashar, the new party led by former chief-of-staff Gadi Eisenekot, with 23 seats. The full distribution of seats in the poll of polls is as follows:
Likud - 25 seats Yashar - 23 Beyachad - 12 Democrats - 10 Yisrael Beitenu - 9 United Torah Judaism - 8 Shas - 8 Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) - 8Hadash-Ta'al - 6Ra'am - 5Religious Zionist - 5Zionist Home-The Reservists - 4Blue & White - 0
(Because of the averaging process, the number of seats does not necessarily total 120.)
The opposition block excluding the Arab parties has weakened by one Knesset seat to 56, while the Arab parties (Ra’am and Hadash-Ta’al) have strengthened by one seat to eleven. The coalition block remains on 54 seats.
This week too, the only survey in which the opposition without the Arab parties reaches a 61-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset is the one in which Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid’s Beyachad wins the highest number of seats, namely the survey published by the Ma’ariv daily. Ma’ariv has shown Beyachad ahead for four successive weeks.
In most of the surveys (Channel 11, Channel 12, Channel 13, and Ma’ariv) the opposition block as a whole, including the Arab parties, wins at least 68 seats. In the i24 News survey the opposition total is 62 seats. Only in the poll conducted for Channel 14 does the opposition fall short of a majority, with 58 seats, while the current coalition wins a majority with 62 seats.
In half of the polls (Channel 11, Channel 12, and Ma’ariv), the Zionist Home-Reservists grouping of Yehiel (Hili) Tropper and Yoaz Hendel passes the minimum vote threshold for winning any Knesset seats, to gain four seats, while in the other half (Channel 13, Channel 14, and i24 News) it fails to reach the threshold.
If former head of Israel Police Lahav 433 unit Yoav Segalovitz joins Ra’am, headed by Mansour Abbas, after leaving Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party, could that be the decisive move that brings the opposition to power? The answer to that question has two parts. First of all, there is no indication of that in the distribution of seats per the latest polls. As they did last week, all the surveys give Ra’am five seats. Although most of the surveys were carried out before the announcement that Segalovitz was leaving Yesh Atid and thus before any agreement on running for Ra’am, it can be assumed that the responses to the surveys to a large extent took in the expectation that this would happen, and so far there is no discernible effect on voting patterns.
The second half of the answer, however, which may well be the more important half, is that Segalovitz might turn Ra’am into a possible coalition partner. The public as a whole is not keen on that possibility. In the Channel 12 survey, only 28% of respondents supported the idea of relying on Yoav Segalovitz to pull the opposition over the 61 Knesset seat line, and in the Ma’ariv survey only 20% of respondents support the inclusion of Ra’am in a future coalition, even if Segalovitz is number two on its Knesset candidates list.
The more relevant figure, however, is the degree of support for the move among opposition block voters. Here, the picture changes dramatically. According to the Channel 12 survey, 45% of people who say they will vote for opposition parties support relying on Segalovitz to form a government, and only 27% object to that prospect.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on August 9, 2026.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2026.
