The three exit polls found that Kulanu narrowly passed the 3.25% electoral threshold, while Gesher did not.
By GIL HOFFMANGesher chair Orly Levy-Abekasis gestures during a speech launching her party's campaign, March 3rd, 2019(photo credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI/ MAARIV)
One socioeconomic party will remain in the Knesset while the other will be on the outside looking in, according to exit polls broadcast on Tuesday night.The three exit polls found that Kulanu narrowly passed the 3.25% electoral threshold, while Gesher did not.Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon sent a message to supporters of his Kulanu Party earlier Tuesday, pleading with them to vote and to enable him to remain in charge of the Treasury. Kahlon said that other parties could afford to lose a seat or two. But if his party did not have enough support, he would be unlikely to keep his plum post.“We are in the moment of truth,” Kahlon said. “It is not a game. We could wake up tomorrow with a merciless government that lacks socioeconomic sensitivity and does not care about senior citizens, the handicapped or the young families.”Kahlon said Kulanu helped young families by subsidizing a longer school day, nursery school education and special saving funds for each child.“All of these things are in danger,” Kahlon warned. “If Kulanu is not strong enough, all of these things will be canceled. That is why I ask you at the last moment to go out and vote and bring your friends and family. Every vote could make a difference in enabling me to remain finance minister.”Kahlon started his morning in the poor Hadera neighborhood of Givat Olga, where he said he recalled that his late mother told him never to forget where he came from.Gesher leader Orly Levy-Abecassis received a blessing from her father, former foreign minister David Levy, in her childhood home in Beit She’an before voting with her children near her home in the nearby Kibbutz Reshafim. She wrote on Twitter that undecided voters were coming to her party and Gesher would be the surprise of the race. But the exit polls proved otherwise.
