National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz leads in the latest political poll with a significant lead along with his party, the weekly political survey conducted for Maariv showed.
Gantz's lead increased by two mandates, showing National Unity would have 41 seats if elections were held today.
The survey for Maariv was conducted by Lazar Research under the leadership of Dr. Menachem Lazar, in cooperation with Panel4All.
If the elections were held today, according to the survey findings – the National Unity Party, as previously stated, would strengthen by two mandates to reach 41. Likud remained with 18 mandates, while Yesh Atid (12) and Otzma Yehudit (9) dropped by one mandate each, and the rest of the parties were without change.
In the question of suitability for prime minister, Benny Gantz stands at about 50%, with no less than 88% of Yesh Atid voters seeing him as more suitable than Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu himself stands at 33% who see him as suitable for the role.
One-fifth Likud voters see Gantz for PM
Notably, one-fifth (22%) of those who voted for Likud in the 2022 elections believe that Benny Gantz is most suitable for the role of prime minister. About 17% do not prefer either Gantz or Netanyahu.
Regarding the distribution of mandates, National Unity stands at 41, Likud at 18, Yesh Atid is weakened by one mandate and stands at 12, and Yisrael Beytenu and Shas would receive 10 mandates each. Otzma Yehudit weakened by one, from 10 last week to 9 this week. United Torah Judaism has six mandates, the Hadash-Ta'al alliance of Ayman Odeh and Ahmad Tibi stands at 5, similar to last week.
Meretz, which is not currently in the Knesset, stands at 5, and Ra'am, led by Mansour Abbas, is at four mandates – closing the list of parties. Those who continue not to pass the electoral threshold include the Religious Zionist Party at 2.8%, Labor, after the decision to hold primaries for party leader, slightly rises to 2.5%, but is still far from the threshold, and Balad also does not pass the electoral threshold – with 1.7%.
In the division between coalition and opposition, the coalition is weakened by one mandate this week to 43, whereas the current opposition is strengthened by one mandate to 68.
The survey was conducted on February 28-29, 2024, and was answered by 511 respondents, representing a sample of the adult population in the state of Israel aged 18 and above, Jews and Arabs. The maximum sampling error in this survey is 4.3%.