Political analyst Shlomo Filber argues that the latest Israeli polling is overstating the strength of both Naftali Bennett and Gadi Eisenkot because the same voters are being counted twice. In his view, former Likud voters who are now backing Eisenkot’s new party, Yashar, did not move directly from Likud to Eisenkot, but first shifted to Bennett over the past year.
Filber says the key question over the past year and a half has been whether there is any real movement between the major blocs, or only movement within them. He says the main disputes are whether 8 to 10 Likud mandates really left for Benny Gantz and Bennett in 2023, and how many mandates the ultra-Orthodox parties will win.
He notes that Channel 14 showed Bennett peaking at 17 mandates and the right-wing bloc at 62 to 64 seats, while other studios gave Bennett as many as 27 mandates and projected only 52 seats for the right-wing bloc. According to Filber, around 3 mandates left Likud for the opposition, while another 1.5 mandates of religious Zionist and kibbutz voters moved from Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir to Bennett. He also says two mandates returned to the right from Gideon Sa’ar’s camp in the State Camp, plus one mandate from Ayelet Shaked and one from voters who became disillusioned with Avigdor Liberman and Benny Gantz.
Filber says the current rise of Eisenkot, which he links to early May 2026, reflects voters who had been with Bennett, not a direct transfer from Likud. He calls the polling problem a case of “double counting,” because the same voters are shown as strengthening both politicians. He says most media maps ignore three crucial issues, the growth of the ultra-Orthodox sector, the real movement back to the right since Sa’ar’s return and the “With the Whole Heart” party, and the exact location of voters leaving the coalition.
In his summary, Filber says the ultra-Orthodox sector is growing demographically and is worth an additional 3 to 4 mandates, and that 5 mandates should be deducted from people who left Likud while 5 mandates were gained from opposition voters shifting from the left to the right. Once those double counts are removed, he says, the true picture is that the Likud defections amount to only 3 mandates, not 10, which is why he считает Channel 14’s numbers the most accurate.
