New Poll Shows Benny Gantz's Party Failing to Cross Election Threshold

A new poll released Wednesday by Kan News indicates that if elections were held today, Benny Gantz's National Unity party would not pass the electoral threshold. The survey, conducted after the deadline for submitting party lists for the 26th Knesset elections, shows Gadi Eisenkot's "Yashr!" party as the largest with 24 mandates, an increase of one from the previous poll. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party follows with 21 mandates, also up by one. Naftali Bennett's "Bechirot" party is third with 12 mandates, losing one seat. Yair Golan's "HaDemocratim" party gains one mandate to reach nine, while Yahadut HaTorah maintains eight. Shas, Otzma Yehudit, and Yisrael Beiteinu each hold seven mandates, as does the Joint List. Bezalel Smotrich's Religious Zionism party, running in a technical bloc with Moshe Feiglin's Zehut, drops to five mandates, one less than before. Ra'am, led by Mansour Abbas, also loses one mandate, settling at five. At the bottom, Ofir Winter's "Am Israel" party and Yoaz Hendel and Yaron Ze'ev's "HaMilyuimnikim-HaKalkalit" party each secure four mandates. The poll, conducted by Kantar with 554 respondents out of 2,300 invited, shows a tie between the Netanyahu bloc and the Eisenkot bloc, each with 52 mandates. The Arab parties collectively hold 12 mandates, and the "HaMilyuimnikim-HaKalkalit" party, which has not declared support for either bloc, has four mandates. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.2%.