Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu succeeded in taking votes away from Naftali Bennett for the fourth election in a row, sources close to Bennett lamented on Tuesday.
Bennett’s associates complained that this time, Netanyahu persuaded Yamina’s voters not to shift to his Likud Party but to the Religious Zionist Party of Bennett’s former ally, MK Bezalel Smotrich.
In a last-minute attempt to woo votes from Smotrich, Bennett posted a video of his American strategist George Birnbaum saying that according to his polls, there was no statistical chance that Smotrich’s party would not cross the 3.25% electoral threshold. Birnbaum spoke alongside Bennett in the video and urged religious-Zionist voters to allow Yamina to finish with double figures.
“With a few more votes, you can get to 10, and that will give Yamina a lot of power in the next government to implement the plans you want to implement,” Birnbaum said.
Smotrich appealed to the Central Elections Committee to call the video illegal.
“Bennett knows that we are on four and a half seats and that one seat makes a huge difference for us and makes no difference for him,” Smotrich said.
Bennett campaigned, shook hands and kissed babies at malls and polling stations in Netanya, Petah Tikva, Herzliya, Ra’anana, Kfar Saba and Givat Shmuel. He ran into Smotrich in Givat Shmuel.
When Bennett voted in Ra’anana, he was greeted with chants declaring him the next prime minister.
“We will bring the change; a government that cares,” Bennett told the crowd.