Poll shows Ra’am winning 2 more seats if Yesh Atid MK Segalovitz joins the party

Channel 13 survey also projects that Hadash-Ta’al and Balad will receive more votes if they merge, while trio of new right-wing parties fails to clear minimum electoral threshold

A new television poll released Wednesday showed that if Yesh Atid MK Yoav Segalovitz joins Ra’am, the Islamist party would pick up two seats, going five to an unprecedented seven.

Segalovitz has reportedly been in talks with Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas about a merger, with an announcement expected in the coming days.

The move has the potential of boosting Abbas’s legitimacy as a coalition partner in the eyes of opposition parties, some of which are campaigning against a potential government that includes Arab-majority factions.

Ra’am was part of the coalition during the previous government headed by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, though the former now rejects it as a coalition partner, saying that following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre, Israel’s coalition should not depend on a non-Zionist party. Abbas however has repeatedly condemned the October 7 atrocities and also recognized Israel as a Jewish state.

The Channel 13 news survey also showed that a merger between the hardline Arab nationalist party Balad and fellow Arab-majority party Hadash-Ta’al would win eight seats — a better result than if they ran separately, in which case Balad would not cross the electoral threshold, while Hadash-Ta’al would receive six seats.

The poll did not provide details on how the potential tie-ups between Segalovitz and Ra’am as well as Balad and Hadash-Ta’al would impact the balance of power between the rival parliamentary blocs. When asking respondents how they would vote today without any of those possible mergers, the opposition bloc received 58 seats — with former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar the largest party, versus 51 for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, with the remaining seats going to the Arab-majority factions. In such a scenario, neither side would have a clear path to a ruling majority in the 120-seat Knesset.

The network also asked respondents whether they would support Ra’am’s inclusion in the coalition if it cuts ties with the Southern Islamic Movement and Segalovitz joins. Forty-five percent of respondents said no, 29% said yes and 26% were unsure.

But among opposition voters, a plurality of 37% said they would back such a coalition, while 32% said they wouldn’t and 31% said they were not sure.

The poll offered bad news for the various new right-wing parties that are trying to make it into the Knesset. All three of them — one headed by former ministers Yoaz Hendel and Chili Trooper, another headed by former Likud ministers Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein and another headed by Benny Gantz and Dedi Simhi — failed to cross the electoral threshold.

Channel 13 polled 961 people, with a sampling error of 3.7%.