🗳️ News 12 poll leaves bloc arithmetic unchanged as Netanyahu improves personally: The News 12/Midgam poll published September 22 projects: Yashar 23 seats; Likud 20; Bennett 13; Democrats 9; Yisrael Beiteinu 9; UTJ 8; Joint List 7; Shas 7; Otzma Yehudit 6; Smotrich-Zehut 5; Ra’am 5; Ofer Winter 4; and Hendel-Zelekha 4.
Under the poll’s bloc definitions, Netanyahu’s bloc has 50 seats, the non-Arab opposition 54 and the Arab parties 12. Hendel-Zelekha’s four seats are counted separately as a “third bloc.”
Compared with News 12’s September 14 poll, Yashar, Likud, Bennett, Smotrich-Zehut, Winter and Hendel-Zelekha are unchanged. The Democrats fall from 10 to 9 as Yisrael Beiteinu rises from 8 to 9; the Joint List falls from 8 to 7 as Ra’am rises from 4 to 5. All bloc totals remain unchanged, reflecting redistribution within the camps without altering the parliamentary route to a government.
The non-Arab opposition remains closest to 61, but is seven seats short. If Hendel-Zelekha ultimately aligned with it, the total would reach 58, still three short. Netanyahu’s bloc remains 11 seats short. Neither side gains a materially new path to a majority.
With Winter and Hendel-Zelekha each projected at just four seats, electoral-threshold survival remains a central vulnerability in this arithmetic. News 12’s article does not provide exact vote percentages for either list. Maariv/Lazar’s September 18 poll placed Winter at 3.4% and Hendel-Zelekha at 3.5%, barely above the 3.25% threshold. The September 17 i24/Direct poll gave Winter five seats but placed Hendel-Zelekha below the threshold at 2.2%. The comparison suggests that Smotrich-Zehut, at five seats in the latest News 12 poll, is comparatively more consistently viable, although still not far from the threshold danger zone.
Netanyahu’s personal standing improved in News 12’s head-to-head comparisons. Against Bennett, he moved from trailing 39%-40% on September 14 to leading 41%-37% on September 22. Against Eisenkot, Netanyahu improved from 36%-42% to 38%-41%, narrowing Eisenkot’s lead from six points to three. These gains did not translate into additional Likud seats or bloc mandates in this survey.
Differences between pollsters remain much larger than the movement within News 12’s series: the latest News 12 figure gives Netanyahu’s bloc 50 seats, while other recently cited polls gave it 60 at i24/Direct and 64 at Channel 14. With each series relatively stable internally, the 10-to-14-seat gap points primarily to pollster and model differences. It does not establish a voter swing of that magnitude over several days.
President Trump also shared an article about an Israeli poll described as showing Netanyahu’s bloc moving into the lead.
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