'Likud gets double the support of other parties'

The Likud would win more than twice as many mandates as any other party if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu advanced the next general election, according to a Smith Research poll sponsored by The Jerusalem Post this week.Netanyahu said in interviews this week that he had no intention of advancing the election, which is set for October 22, 2013. The poll of 500 respondents representing a statistical sample of the Jewish and Arab adult population in Israel was taken on Sunday and Monday and had a had a 4.5 percentage point margin of error.Likud would win 31 seats, followed by Labor and Yisrael Beytenu with 15 each, Kadima with 13, former journalist Yair Lapid’s new Atid Party with 11, Shas eight, United Torah Judaism six, National Union four, and Habayit Hayehudi and Meretz three each. The three Arab parties together would win 11 mandates.Altogether, the Right-Center bloc would win 67 seats and the Left-Center bloc 53. The split in the current Knesset is 65-55.Eighteen percent of respondents consider themselves undecided, 30% of whom voted for Kadima in the last election.Only a quarter of Kadima voters in 2009 intend to vote for the party in the next election. Some 25% support Lapid’s party, 14% Labor, and 25% are undecided.