Poll Shows Eisenkot Gaining as Bennett and Lapid Slide

Four months before Israel’s election, the latest Kan 11 poll by the Kantor Institute, conducted under Dudi Hassid, says the trends are continuing. If voting were held now, Likud would remain the largest party with 24 seats, but Gadi Eisenkot is closing the gap with 22.

Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid keep falling and are down to 16 seats each. Yisrael Beiteinu and Avigdor Liberman are the surprise of the poll with 10 seats, their first double-digit result in a long time. Yair Golan’s Democrats and Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit each receive 9 seats.

Among the ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas drops to 8 seats and United Torah Judaism stays at 7. Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism rises to 5 seats after a long period below the electoral threshold. The Arab parties together win 10 seats, with 6 for Hadash-Ta’al and 4 for Ra’am.

In bloc terms, the coalition is projected at 53 seats, compared with 57 for the opposition bloc and 10 for the Arab parties. The poll suggests Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc is beginning to improve.