Poll: Israelis Shift to the Political Right After U.S. Election

The Israeli Right gained more support following last week’s U.S. election, according to a Panels Research poll taken for The Jerusalem Post and its Hebrew-language Maariv sister publication on Thursday.

The poll of 540 respondents, representing a statistical sample of the adult population, found that if elections were held today, the rightwing bloc would gain four Knesset seats when compared with a similar poll carried out the previous week.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and Naftali Bennett’s Yamina, Israel’s two largest rightwing parties, as well as smaller parties, would have 70 seats, up from 66 on October 29. Surprisingly, the extra seats were mostly culled from left-leaning parties, Blue and White and Meretz, as well as the Arab-majority Joint List party.

Likud would win 30 seats, which is two more than it had in the previous poll, while Yamina would earn 23, up from 21.  The rightwing bloc as a whole does not include the rightwing secular party, Yisrael Beytenu.

According to the Jerusalem Post, the poll could be seen as a sign that Israelis have become more conservative due to concerns about apparent president-elect Joe Biden.

Israelis on the right are especially concerned about Biden’s decision to reenter a nuclear deal with Iran, which has threatened to eliminate Israel.

Biden has also promised to renew ties with the Palestinians, financial and diplomatic, to the extent possible, including restoring aid and reopening the PLO diplomatic mission in Washington.

The poll predicted 17 mandates for Yesh Atid-Telem, 11 for Joint List, nine each for Blue and White and Shas, eight each for Yisrael Beytenu and United Torah Judaism and five seats for Meretz.

The percentage of voters who identified as undecided fell from 26 percent in the poll two weeks ago to 22 percent in the current survey.

Asked whether the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis would impact how they vote, 74 percent of Yesh Atid-Telem voters, 64 percent of Yamina voters and 56 percent of Likud voters answered in the affirmative.