Heading into the last stretch of the 2019 do-over election, the polls are more confusing and less stable.
After the center-left party Blue and White pulled ahead of the Likud last week for the first time in the current campaign, the party appears to be losing steam, while the Likud is gaining.
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This week's i24NEWS-Israel Hayom poll predicted 31 seats for the Likud, while its main rival on the Center-Left, Blue and White, was projected to drop to 30 seats.
Elsewhere on the Right, the poll projected eight seats each for Yamina (formerly the New Right) and Shas, and seven seats for United Torah Judaism.
While the poll showed that the far-right Otzma Yehudit would pass the minimum electoral threshold of 3.25%, the party would not win enough seats to lock in a right-wing coalition of 61 MKs or more. As of this week, the Right is projected to win 58 seats.
In the left-wing camp, while Blue and White dropped a seat, Labor-Gesher moved up to a projected six seats.
However, the poll predicted only four seats for the Democratic Union (Ehud Barak and Meretz), putting the party barely over the minimum electoral threshold. In total, this gives the left-wing camp a projected 51 seats.
Yisrael Beytenu under Avigdor Lieberman held steady in this week's poll at 11 seats, retaining its position as the party that could determine the makeup of the next government.
The Joint Arab List was also predicted to win 11 seats.
The Maagar Mohot Institute under Professor Yitzhak Katz polled a representative sample of 603 adult Israelis to compile this week's results. The poll has a margin of error of 4%.
Two significant political events took place between last week's poll and the current one that could explain the changes. The first was the sudden spike in hostilities on the northern border. It only lasted a day, but it might have been enough to reshuffle the priorities of some of the respondents.
The second event was Moshe Feiglin's Zehut party dropping out of the race. The absence of Feiglin helped bolster the Likud, but also Otzma Yehudit – which, according to this week's poll, will now pass the minimum electoral threshold, despite the Likud campaign that did its best to make that seem impossible.
When asked who they thought was best-qualified to serve as prime minister, 40% of respondents picked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, compared to 23% who said they thought Blue and White leader Benny Gantz would be the best prime minister. Some 5% of respondents said Yamina leader Ayelet Shaked was the best candidate for prime minister, and 4% of respondents said they thought Labor leader Amir Peretz was the best pick.
Only 3% of respondents said they thought that Yair Lapid, Ehud Barak, or Avigdor Lieberman was best-suited to serve as prime minister.
