Ex-PMs' party would win 41 seats if Eisenkot joined — survey

Poll shows new Lapid-Bennett union edging out Likud as largest party

Channel 12 survey says Jewish-majority opposition parties led by Bennett would win 60 seats, with PM’s coalition at 50, Arab parties at 10; marks no change from last week’s polling

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid’s combined electoral list, dubbed “Together,” would receive a total of 26 seats if elections were held Monday, placing them ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud as the Knesset’s largest party, according to a new poll by Channel 12.

In the poll — the network’s first since Sunday night’s announcement of the union, Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc only garnered 50 out of 120 Knesset seats while the Zionist opposition parties received 60 and the Arab factions 10 — an identical showing to last Thursday’s Channel 12 survey.

The combined Bennett-Lapid platform’s showing of 26 seats is one less than the two received separately in that previous poll, in which Bennett 2026 and Yesh Atid garnered 21 and 7 seats, respectively.

Together is followed by Likud with 25 seats; Gadi Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar at 15; the left-leaning Democrats at 10; the Mizrahi ultra-Orthodox Shas, the secular, right-wing Yisrael Beytenu and the far-right Otzma Yehudit at 9 each; the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism at 7; and the Arab-majority Hadash-Ta’al and the Islamist Ra’am each with 5.

The ultra-nationalist Arab Balad party, the Reservists, Bezalel Smotrich’s far-right Religious Zionism, and Benny Gantz’s centrist Blue and White all fall below the electoral threshold.

According to the poll, in the event that Eisenkot would join Bennett and Lapid in a single list, their united party would garner 41 seats, but the overall balance of the blocs would remain unaffected.

The Channel 12 poll also found that should several right-wing critics of Netanyahu establish an alternative party on the right — dubbed Likud B by the press — it would siphon away support from both the coalition and opposition, and would ultimately weaken the opposition bloc’s overall standing.

The poll, carried out by Mano Geva, surveyed 501 Israelis online and over the phone, with a margin of error of 4.4%.

Both Netanyahu and Bennett are again campaigning on not forming a coalition with Arab-majority parties. Bennett pledged not to sit in the same government as Ra’am during the 2021 election campaign, but did subsequently just that in order to form a coalition. Bennett said Sunday that Netanyahu was ready to the same thing, a claim Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas has repeatedly made.

While the 2021-22 Bennett-Lapid government appeared to break the taboo against such high-level political cooperation with Arab majority parties — and both of them have touted Ra’am chairman Abbas as a trailblazer looking to improve the lives of Israel’s Arab citizens while accepting Israel as a Jewish state — attitudes toward such collaboration have soured following Hamas’s October 7 attack.

According to a Channel 13 poll also released Monday evening, the coalition would receive 57 seats — up three from the network’s last poll — while the Jewish-majority opposition parties would receive 52 and the Arab-majority parties 11 seats.

A Walla poll released earlier Monday showed Together garnering 27 seats, with Likud rising to 28. With Eisenkot, Together would receive 41 seats — with the opposition standing at 59 seats and the coalition 51.

Last week, a poll conducted by Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site, put the current coalition at 51 seats in total, while the Zionist opposition would receive 60 and the Arab-majority parties 9. Neither side would be able to assemble a 61-strong majority and form a government without Arab party support.

Elections must take place by October 2026 at the latest.