📊 THREE POLLS, THREE DIFFERENT BLOCS: Three national polls published Wednesday point to the same new variable: whether the newly unified Smotrich-Feiglin list and Ofer Winter’s Amcha Israel can both cross the electoral threshold without costing the right-wing bloc mandates.
i24NEWS / Direct Polls places Netanyahu + Winter at 60 seats, the non-Arab opposition at 48 and Arab parties at 12. Smotrich-Feiglin receives 6 and Winter 5. A hypothetical merger of the two produces the same combined 11 seats, reducing threshold risk without adding mandates.
Channel 13 places Netanyahu at 53, the non-Arab opposition at 53 and Arab parties at 14. Smotrich-Feiglin receives 6 and Winter 4, bringing both above the threshold and erasing the previous nine-seat gap between Netanyahu and the non-Arab opposition.
Walla / Lazar Research gives Netanyahu 49, the non-Arab opposition 58 and Arab parties 13. Smotrich-Feiglin receives 5 while Winter, at 2.3%, is eliminated. The shift largely substitutes Smotrich-Feiglin for Winter without changing Netanyahu’s 49-seat position from Walla’s previous poll.
Walla also places Tropper-Hendel at 3.0%, just 0.25 percentage point below the threshold, and estimates roughly 10% of votes, equivalent to about 12 mandates, are currently going to parties below it. In a scenario where Tally Gotliv moves from Likud to Otzma Yehudit, Winter rises to 2.8% but remains eliminated, while Netanyahu falls to 48.
🔹 THE THRESHOLD QUESTION NOW DOMINATES: The same-day divergence remains striking: i24 places Netanyahu + Winter at 60, News 13 at 53 and Walla at 49, while Channel 14 remains around 63. Recent News 12 and Kan measurements have also placed Netanyahu substantially lower.
Channel 12’s Amit Segal cautioned against treating the News 13 movement as a literal weekly voter shift, arguing there was “no chance” roughly a quarter-million voters moved between blocs in one week and noting that pollsters generally show very little movement between the blocs.
The cross-pollster gap is therefore much larger than the movement within individual surveys. Wednesday’s polls do not establish a synchronized national swing. They do show that the Smotrich-Feiglin merger has materially changed the threshold landscape.
In i24 and News 13, both Smotrich-Feiglin and Winter survive. In Walla, only Smotrich-Feiglin crosses. Whether both can consistently remain above the threshold across the broader polling field is becoming one of the key variables on the path to 61.
🇮🇱 WINTER REJECTS PRESSURE, SETS HAREDI DRAFT CONDITION: Winter rejected what he described as attempts to pressure or divide his movement. He said Amcha Israel intends to integrate Haredim into the IDF “without compromises or delays” and would not join a government unless legislation ending draft evasion is passed before its formation: “Without that, we will not serve in the government. Period.”
Responding to reports that Netanyahu could offer Yoseph Haddad a reserved Likud position, Winter said: “We won’t let anyone drive a wedge between us.” Haddad likewise said the group was “one united fist” and had entered politics “not for the chair, but for the table.”
Winter said any future political merger would be considered only with new political forces.
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