Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rise in the polls continues, with his Likud Party reaching the key threshold of 30 seats (out of 120) in a new poll by Israel’s center-right Channel 14.
The poll, published Thursday, is the first poll since the Hamas terror attack of October 7 and the war that has followed to show the Likud Party at or above 30 seats — near the 32 seats it won in the November 2022 election, when it led a right-wing bloc to victory.
The two major opposition parties continued to fall behind, as did their leaders. Netanyahu was the favorite in the poll for prime minister with 46% support, followed by Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid with 27% each.
The result reflects a recovery for Netanyahu and Likud, who sank during public protests at judicial reforms in 2023, and fell further after the October 7 attack.
Just last month, another poll suggested that the right-wing coalition that won 65 seats in 2022 had recovered to reach the polling equivalent of nearly 60 seats, just one shy of the number needed to form a majority and a government.
The Israeli public, after nearly 11 months of war, and amid a tumultuous relationship with the Biden administration, has come to trust Netanyahu’s ability to stand up to Hamas — and to disagree, where necessary, with the United States.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.