2026 Knesset Elections

Why is Ben Gvir rising in the polls while Smotrich can’t keep his head above water?

The hard-right parties ran together in 2022, but Otzma Yehudit has now climbed to around 10 seats in surveys, while Religious Zionism can’t clear the electoral threshold

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party experienced a slight dip in the polls following last week’s American announcement of a ceasefire in the war with Iran, owing to the perception that many of the war’s stated goals had not been met. But other members of his hard-right coalition have seen more dramatic changes to their electoral prospects.

According to a poll released by national broadcaster Kan last Thursday, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit party rose significantly to a projected 10 seats, up from its current six.

At the same time, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, which ran on a joint list with Otzma Yehudit in the last election and which currently holds seven of the Knesset’s 120 seats, again failed to pass the 3.25 percent electoral threshold — as it has consistently in most polls for some time now.

Why is one of Netanyahu’s far-right allies surging in the polls, while another has dropped so precipitously?

“Ben Gvir is hardcore, and today everyone wants hardcore,” pollster Mitchell Barak of Keevoon Research Strategy & Communications told The Times of Israel, explaining that Ben Gvir’s harsh rhetoric appeals to young voters on the right much more than the relatively restrained Smotrich.

As police minister, Ben Gvir may not have much to show in the way of substantive achievements, with violent crime on the rise and accusations that he engages in populist rather than substantive measures. But his voter base may care less about competence than his opposition to the so-called “deep state,” a conspiracy theory spread by coalition members claiming that an unelected cabal of officials is exercising illegitimate state power and is out to thwart them, Barak said.

According to Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst and Haaretz columnist, while the specific political dynamic explaining Ben Gvir’s rise and Smotrich’s fall remains less than fully clear, hard-right religious voters are “a limited demographic.” Ben Gvir is “splashy, radical and anti-establishment,” allowing him to pick up “an anti-establishment vote on the far-right side of the map.”

Agreeing with Barak’s criticism of Ben Gvir as a minister, Scheindlin argued that his supporters are happy with the politicization of the police and “think it’s good that he’s reshaping policing in Israel to reflect a more right-wing view, less tolerant of, you know, pesky lefties and anti-war types.”

As for Smotrich, he has been “trying to distinguish himself from Ben Gvir over the last couple of years by appealing to the mainstream traditional religious Zionist group…and it’s not totally working,” said Scheindlin.

The failure of Smotrich

As for why Smotrich is not seeing similar success with voters despite, in Scheindlin’s words, being “an incredibly successful minister in terms of what he has promised to do” on expanding West Bank settlements, part of it may come down to the fact that he is both the finance minister overseeing a wartime economy, and the political representative of a religious community deeply resentful of the government’s efforts to pass legislation exempting ultra-Orthodox men from military service.

According to a July 2025 survey conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute, more than three-quarters of Religious Zionism voters support the imposition of sanctions and withdrawal of benefits from Haredim who do not serve in the IDF. Smotrich, who did almost no IDF service himself, has been noncommittal on how he will vote on the controversial military exemption bill.

Speaking with The Times of Israel on Tuesday afternoon, Ariel Finkelstein, a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute who focuses on issues of religion and state, noted that while Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism hold similar positions and even ran together in a brief “technical” alliance for the 2022 elections, they appeal to slightly disparate audiences.

While there is some overlap, “they are competing for different target demographics,” with Ben Gvir garnering support among “traditional Mizrahi voters from the periphery” and Smotrich appealing to “the more mainstream Religious Zionist crowd.”

Ben Gvir is actually competing with Likud and the ultra-Orthodox Shas party for voters, which “is less troubled by these issues of the draft and the Haredim,” while Smotrich’s voters have carried a “relatively high share of the war’s burden” in terms of reserve duty and casualties, Finkelstein said.

“You don’t see Ben Gvir getting hurt by this, even though he supports everything the government does regarding the Draft Law. You see a lot of pressure on Smotrich to deal with it, and he is much weaker because his voters feel much more anger and rage on this topic.”

Another joint run?

In the end, “there’s a very high chance” that Smotrich will attempt to join with another right-wing party for a joint run in the coming election, similar to the deal Netanyahu brokered between him and Ben Gvir in 2022, said Scheindlin.

“I think it’s obvious any party that’s doing so poorly in all surveys for so long is going to be thinking first and foremost about the kinds of political constellations that [they] can forge that will ensure that [they] stay in Knesset. So I don’t think anybody is under illusions that the next elections are going to vote Smotrich out of office.”

The next general election must be held by late October.

Asked about his party’s electoral chances, Religious Zionism MK Simcha Rothman, the chairman of the powerful Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, told The Times of Israel he believed that “with each passing day, the public is becoming increasingly exposed to the tremendous impact of Religious Zionism in settlement, the legal system, the economy and every field in which we operate.”

“Therefore,” he asserted, “I am certain that Religious Zionism will be very successful in the upcoming elections.”