The hostage agreement strengthened Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Likud's position in the electoral map, while other coalition parties suffered from their opposition to the deal, according to a poll by Maariv published on Friday.
Naftali Bennet’s party of the Change Bloc also lost seats according to the poll, with only 19 MKs getting into Knesset -the lowest since it started to be included in the survey in August of 2024- and three seats less than in the last edition.
This may be a result of Bennet’s lack of a clear public statement regarding the deal, according to Maariv analysts. In contrast, Yesh Atid jumped three seats mainly because of Yair Lapid’s support of the deal over any other political decision.
In overall terms, the deal had a negative impact on the Change Bloc, with polls indicating that they won’t be able to form a government with only 59. This is mainly because Blue and White did not pass the threshold.
If elections were to be held today, the poll shows that the opposition currently has 59 seats against 51 from Netanyahu’s government, while Arab parties have 10 seats.
Half of Israelis push for elections after war
The Maariv poll also revealed that almost half of Israelis (49%) ask for elections once the hostage deal is completed, with 39% stating they are against and 13% not having an opinion on the matter.
The survey was conducted by Lazar Research in collaboration with Panel4All, with 500 respondents, representing a representative sample of the adult population in the State of Israel aged 18 and over, both Jews and Arabs. The maximum sampling error in the survey is 4.4%.