Likud wins by narrow margin at bellwether Blich school

By REBECCA ANNA STOIL
Elections may still be years away, but a poll conducted Wednesday at the bellwether Blich High School in Ramat Gan hinted that the next Knesset elections could yield a result strikingly similar to the current political constellation.
Eleventh and twelfth-grade students voted in support of Likud by a narrow margin after listening to a policy debate among MK Tzipi Hotovely (Likud), MK Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz) and MK Yohanan Plesner (Kadima) on the topic “The State of Israel in the Age of Obama.”
Blich leaped to national prominence as a predictor of election outcomesin 1977, after the mock elections shortly before the national pollsuccessfully predicted that Menahem Begin’s Likud would defeat theLabor Party for the first time.
In 1992, the school’s poll also correctly called Yitzhak Rabin’s victory over Likud incumbent Yitzhak Shamir.
The high school didn’t hold a mock vote prior to the most recent elections in 2009, due to Operation Cast Lead.