Gideon Sa'ar's New Hope party was off to a promising start. After all, it was founded by a respected Likud member who split from his longtime political home citing a new vision for the country. Sa'ar was soon joined by popular MK Yifat Shasha-Biton thus augmenting the fanfare, and the polls went wild.
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Two months into the election campaign, however, New Hope began faltering in the polls. Its nonexistent voter base finally caught up with it and electoral surveys reacted accordingly: the party, initially projected to win upward of 15 Knesset seats, in not looking at 10 seats at best, with most polls projecting a single-digit number of mandates.
The similarities between Sa'ar and Shasha-Biton's New Hope and Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked's 2019 bid under the New Right party are uncanny. The New Right failed to cross the four-seat electoral threshold, sending Bennett into court-correct mode from which he has emerged as the would-be kingmaker of the 2021 elections.
To his credit, Sa'ar has tried to learn from Bennett's mistakes, chief among them the need for a stable voter base.
During his years in the Likud, Sa'ar crisscrossed Israel in an effort to shore up support among right-wing voters for the day he would strike out on his own. So much so, that he was considered the Likud MK with the most significant on-the-ground presence. This undoubtedly helped New Hope from its 150 branches nationwide, but it still may not be enough to storm the Prime Minister's Office. For that, you need a clear political ideology, a recognized doctrine that provides the public with a true alternative to the existing government. The "Anyone but Netanyahu" policy doesn't exactly hold water.
The polls predating New Hope's rise to political stardom may very well be its undoing simply because they set the bar far too high. Sa'ar would be wise to remember that the higher you climb, the harder you fall – below the electoral threshold, that is.
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