'Post' poll: Likud-Beytenu hits new low of 32 seats

Smith Research poll shows ongoing downward spiral of PM's joint list; Bayit Yehudi rises to 16 seats, nearly overtaking Labor (17).

By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN
Liberman and Netanyahu 370 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/ The Jerusalem Post)
Liberman and Netanyahu 370
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/ The Jerusalem Post)
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman's joint Likud-Beytenu list continued its downward spiral in a Smith Research poll taken Tuesday and Wednesday for The Jerusalem Post and the economic newspaper Globes.
When the 27-seat Likud and 15-seat Yisrael Beytenu joined forces on October 25, the two parties' American strategist Arthur Finkelstein predicted that the joint list would win 47 seats in the January 22 election. But the Post's polls forecast 37 seats after the announcement, 34 last Friday, and now a new low of only 32 seats.
Labor also kept on falling, winning only 17 seats, compared to 18 last week and 22 at the end of October. Bayit Yehudi continued its surge forward, nearly passing Labor into second place with 16 seats, compared to 14 last week and nine at the end of October.
Click for full JPost coverage
Click for full JPost coverage
The rest of the parties remained relatively consistent, with Shas, Yesh Atid, and the Tzipi Livni Party winning 10 seats; United Torah Judaism five, Meretz, Hadash, and Balad four; United Arab List-Ta'al and Am Shalem three and Kadima two.
Strong Israel, Green Leaf, the Green Party, and the Eretz Hadasha party of Defense Minister Ehud Barak's former bureau chief Eldad Yaniv failed to pass the two percent threshold, which is expected to be about 70,000 votes.
The poll of a statistical sample of the adult Israeli population has a four percent margin of error.