Majority of Israelis expect Netanyahu to be the next PM - new poll

Fifty-six percent of the Israeli public thinks that there is a small chance that a candidate besides Netanyahu will form the next government.

By LEON SVERDLOV
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives at the Knesset ahead of the vote on whether it will disperse, May 29 (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives at the Knesset ahead of the vote on whether it will disperse, May 29
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
The majority of Israelis expect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be re-elected on Sept. 17, according to a new poll by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI). Some 56% of the Israeli public thinks that there is a small chance that a candidate besides Netanyahu will form the next government.
In addition, most Israelis say they think he is doing a good job in many areas.
More than 60% of Israelis believe that Netanyahu is successful in strengthening Israel in the international arena and around the same number of people say he is doing a good job handling of the Iranian crisis, the poll, known as the Israeli Voice Index, reported.
Additionally, 45% of Israelis say they support Netanyahu's economic policies.
However, when it comes to issues of the prime minister's socioeconomic policies, more than half rated his work as "bad." More than half of the poll's respondents said they oppose Netanyahu's actions targeting poverty and class gaps. 
The poll also showed that nearly half of Israelis believe the PM to be corrupt and more than 40% oppose his positions regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Israeli Voice Index is a project of the Guttman Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research of the Israel Democracy Institute. In the survey, which was conducted on the internet and by telephone (supplements of groups that are not sufficiently represented on the network) from July 28 to July 30, 652 men and women were interviewed in Hebrew and 127 in Arabic, constituting a representative national sample of the entire adult population of Israel aged 18 and older. The maximum sampling error for the entire sample was 3.7%± at a confidence level of 95%.