Want to predict how an Israeli will vote? Look at their religiosity, survey says

Study finds that in 2022 election, political divides mapped onto Israel’s religious spectrum, with Haredim likeliest to back coalition and secular voters likeliest to oppose it

Israel’s political divide correlates strongly with the country’s Jewish religious spectrum, a new study of the 2022 election found, showing that the more religious voters were, the likelier they were to vote for the current right-wing coalition, and vice versa.

The study by the Israel Democracy Institute, published Sunday, comes a few months before Israelis are due to head to the ballot box again. Polls show a competitive race between the ruling bloc of right-wing and religious parties that support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the largely centrist, left-wing and secularist parties that hope to unseat him.

In the 2022 election, coalition parties won 64 out of the Knesset’s 120 seats, while opposition parties won 56. Netanyahu’s Likud party won 32 seats, the most of any party, while the opposition centrist Yesh Atid won 24.

The survey found that Haredi voters were the most likely to support coalition parties, while secular voters were most likely to support the opposition.

Eighty percent of the coalition parties’ voters were Haredi, religious Zionist or traditional Jews, while 73.5% of the opposition’s voters were secular. Likud, which has roots as a right-wing secular party, relied to a large extent on traditional and religious voters.

“Against the backdrop of the strengthening of ‘tribal’ trends in Israeli society, which are based to a large extent on the division of Israeli society into different groups along religious lines, it is especially important in Israel to examine the relationship between voting and the variable of religious self-definition,” the study’s author, Ariel Finkelstein, wrote.

The analysis drew on 20 IDI surveys conducted between November 2022 and October 2023 and included 12,322 Jewish Israelis aged 18 and over. The study did not include Arab Israelis, who make up upwards of 20% of the Israeli population. Arab political parties hold 10 seats in the Knesset, with polls predicting similar numbers ahead of this year’s election.

According to a 2025 IDI survey, 43.6% of Israelis identify as secular, nearly a third identify as traditional, nearly 13% identify as national-religious and 11.6% identify as Haredi.

According to the analysis, 97% of ultra-Orthodox voters cast their ballots for coalition parties. That support was driven by the 86% of Haredi voters who backed Haredi parties, with 58% voting for the Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism and 28% voting for the Sephardi Shas.

Seven percent of Haredi voters supported the joint far-right slate of Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit, while 3% voted for Likud.

Among national-religious, or religious Zionist, voters, including Haredi-national religious “Hardal” voters, 80% backed the coalition. That includes 45% who voted for Religious Zionism-Otzma Yehudit and 22.5% who voted for Likud.

Another 13% voted for Haredi parties while 9% voted for the right-wing Jewish Home party, which did not receive enough votes to enter the Knesset. The center-right opposition National Unity party won 5.5% of national-religious votes.

Some two-thirds of traditional voters supported coalition parties, with nearly half, 46.5%, voting for Likud, and another 14% voting for the far-right list. A quarter of traditional voters were split evenly between Yesh Atid (13%) and National Unity (12.5%).

By contrast, nearly three-quarters of secular voters (74%) supported opposition parties. A plurality, 39%, voted for Yesh Atid, and 16% voted for the left-wing Labor and Meretz parties, the latter of which fell short of entering the Knesset. Another 13% voted for National Unity.

Twenty percent of secular voters backed Likud. The remainder were split among other parties.

Likud relied on support from traditional Jewish Israelis, who made up 57% of its voters. Another 10% of Likud voters were national religious, while 32% were secular.

Yesh Atid, by contrast, relied heavily on secular voters, who made up 78.5% of its voters, while 20% of its voters were traditional.