Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and the Zionist opposition bloc would each get 53 of the Knesset’s 120 seats if the elections were held today, leaving both short of a government if they fail to rely on defectors or on Arab support, according to a poll published Thursday by The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister site, Zman Yisrael.

As infighting wracks the Zionist anti-Netanyahu parties, the poll also showed 67 percent of respondents who support the so-called “change bloc” want its four leaders — Naftali Bennett, Gadi Eisenkot, Yair Golan, and Avigdor Liberman — to rally behind a single candidate for prime minister ahead of the October 27 election.

Meanwhile, a Channel 13 poll Wednesday had the “change bloc” leading Netanyahu’s bloc 52-51, after Netanyahu’s bloc narrowly came out ahead, for the first time in months, in last week’s Channel 13 poll, which was subsequently touted on US President Donald Trump’s social media.

The Zman Yisrael and new Channel 13 polls both showed Arab-majority parties holding the balance of power, though leaders in both Netanyahu’s bloc and the “change bloc” have said they would refuse to rely on Arab support.

In the Zman Yisrael poll, the anti-Zionist Joint Arab List and the traditionalist Ra’am party respectively received eight and six seats, the same results as in last week’s Zman poll.

Ra’am has said it wants to join the next government, and it served in the so-called “change government” that briefly unseated Netanyahu in 2021-2022, after the premier himself negotiated with the party on possibly joining his coalition.

The new Zman poll also showed former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar party continuing its run at the top, with 23 seats, down from 24 last week. Behind Yashar in the “change bloc” were right-wing former premier Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad party with 12 seats, down from 14 last week; MK Avigdor Liberman’s hawkish-secularist Yisrael Beytenu with 10 seats, up from nine last week; and former deputy IDF chief Yair Golan’s left-leaning Democrats with eight seats, the same as last week.

Netanyahu’s Likud was the second-largest party in the Zman poll, with 21 seats, down from 22 in last week’s poll. Behind Likud in Netanyahu’s bloc were the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox Shas with 10 seats, up from nine last week; its Ashkenazic counterpart United Torah Judaism with........

© The Times of Israel