{"id":335568,"date":"2026-10-20T11:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T11:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/335568\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T11:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T11:44:08","slug":"israel-election-2026-gadi-eisenkot-naftali-bennett-gain-as-benjamin-netanyahu-slips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/335568\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel election 2026: Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett gain as Benjamin Netanyahu slips"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot<\/a> and B’Yachad party leader Naftali Bennett gained ground in the latest Knesset election poll, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud weakened, widening the gap between the two largest parties to four seats a week ahead of election day, according to a Walla poll published on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The poll, conducted on Monday following the withdrawal of Benny Gantz’s<\/a> Blue and White Party from the race, found that Yashar rose to 23 seats, while Likud fell one to 19.<\/p>\n

B’Yachad also gained one seat, rising to 14, while Yair Golan’s The Democrats fell to nine and Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu dropped to eight.<\/p>\n

Shas gained one seat, rising to eight, and United Torah Judaism fell to seven. Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit remained at eight, and the Religious Zionist Party and Zehut, led by Bezalel Smotrich<\/a> and Moshe Feiglin, also remained at six.<\/p>\n

The Joint List remained at eight, while Ra’am gained one seat, rising to six.<\/p>\n

\"IllustrativeIllustrative of Knesset election results according to a poll published on October 20, 2026. (credit: ILLUSTRATIVE)<\/p>\n

A central question ahead of the elections is whether Ofer Winter’s People of Israel<\/a> will succeed in passing the threshold. The latest poll found that it failed to reach the required 3.25%, polling at 2.9% support.<\/p>\n

However, Yoaz Hendel and Yaron Zelekha’s Reservists-Economic Party passed the threshold, gaining four seats.<\/p>\n

However, neither bloc received the necessary support to secure a majority to form a government. Netanyahu’s coalition bloc fell one seat, from 49 to 48, while opposition parties stayed steady at 54 seats.<\/p>\n

This means that even though the opposition parties maintained a six-seat advantage over Netanyahu’s coalition bloc, they would still need additional partners to pass the 61-seat majority line.<\/p>\n

This illustrates the potentially significant role of parties that are not aligned with either of the two main political blocs, although they do not necessarily indicate the composition of the next government.<\/p>\n

Supermajority of respondents decided on who to vote for in Knesset election, Walla poll finds<\/p>\n

The poll also surveyed how confident voters were in their decisions. Among all respondents, 45% said they were completely certain who they would vote for, while another 49% said they were fairly certain. Additionally, 5% said they were not very certain, and 1% said that they were not certain at all, the poll found.<\/p>\n

However, this differed between parties. 81% of Joint List voters, 68% of Likud voters, 62% of RZP and Zehut voters, 56% of Shas voters, 40% of Yashar voters, and 23% of B’Yachad voters were completely certain of their choice.<\/p>\n

Similarly, when viewed as supporters of a political bloc, 54% of coalition voters were completely certain of their choice, as compared with 35% of opposition voters.<\/p>\n

The poll was conducted on October 19, 2026, using the Panel4All online respondent panel, among 601 respondents representing Israel’s adult population. The maximum sampling error was 4%, meaning that changes of a single Knesset seat should be interpreted with caution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot and B’Yachad party leader Naftali Bennett gained ground in the latest Knesset election…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[29674,67830,41,10843,16707,37,4028,16705,4029,4030,71965],"class_list":["post-335568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-2026-israeli-elections","tag-byachad","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-benny-gantz","tag-gadi-eisenkot","tag-israel","tag-knesset","tag-likud","tag-naftali-bennett","tag-poll","tag-yashar-party"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117473068413639225","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}