In just four weeks' time, Israelis will once again head to the ballot box to elect the next parliament, merely five months after the Knesset dissolved following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's failure to form a governing coalition despite his party's success in the April elections.
The question remains, however, whether the Sept. 17 election will bring with it a different result.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook and Twitter
According to a joint poll conducted by Israel Hayom and i24NEWS on Thursday, while the majority of Israelis say they will vote the same as they did in April, there remains a significant margin of voters who could potentially change their vote in this round of elections.
The poll found that 60% of Israelis plan to vote for the same party in September as they did in April, while 23% said they will vote for a different party. About 17% of those polled said they had yet to decide on the matter.
Were an election held at this time, the ruling Likud party would win 32 Knesset seats, the survey projected. Challenger Blue and White would secure 31 seats, followed by the Joint Arab List (12), Yisrael Beytenu and United Right with 10 seats each, Shas (8), United Torah Judaism (7), the Democratic Union (5), and Labor which manages to just scrape by the 3.25% electoral threshold, winning four seats.
Far-right party Otzma Yehudit and former Likud MK Moshe Feiglin's Zehut party will not pass the electoral threshold, the poll found. Together, they could be worth six Knesset seats, but as they have not joined any of the right-wing parties, these votes will essentially go to waste.
These results afford the Right bloc 57 mandates compared to the Center-Left bloc's of 53, again placing the fate of the next government in the hands of Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Lieberman.
The polls further tried to discern the public's preference as to the nature of the next government.
About 26% of respondents favored a Likud-Blue and White unity government, 23% said they would like to see a narrow right-wing government in which Likud would team with its natural partners, 21% favored a Blue and White-led left-wing government, 14% said they would like to see Labor join a right-wing coalition, and 16% said they had no opinion on the matter.
Asked who they believed is most qualified to serve as prime minister, 39% of respondents named Benjamin Netanyahu, 23% preferred Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, 5% opted for Blue and White co-leader, Yesh Atid chief Yair Laid, 5% named United Right leader Ayelet Shaked – the only woman to head a political party – 4% said they would like to see former Prime Minister Ehud Barak (Democratic Union) elected as premier, 3% opted for Labor Leader Amir Peretz, 3% named Lieberman, and 18% said they would like to see someone else named as prime minister.
