Prime Ministerial candidate Gideon Sa'ar would be able to form a government with Yamina, Yesh Atid, Yisrael Beytenu and Blue and White, leaving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud, Shas, United Torah Judaism, Meretz and the Joint List in the opposition, according to a new poll taken Thursday for The Jerusalem Post and its Hebrew sister newspaper Maariv.
The poll predicted 21 seats for Sa'ar's New Hope party, just five seats less than Likud. The addition of Likud minister Ze'ev Elkin on Wednesday appeared to give a boost to Sa'ar, who cut the Likud's lead in last week's poll from ten mandates to five.
If the March 23 election would be held now, the poll predicted Yamina would win 15 seats, Yesh Atid-Telem 14, the Joint List 11 and Shas eight. There would be seven seats each for United Torah Judaism, Yisrael Beytenu and Meretz.
The poll predicted only four seats for Blue and White, which would barely cross the 3.25% electoral threshold. Last week's poll predicted seven seats for Blue and White.
The Center-Right anti-Netanyahu bloc of New Hope, Yamina, Yesh Atid, Yisrael Beytenu and Blue and White would win 61 seats, the Netanyahu-Haredim (ultra-Orthodox bloc) 41 and the left-wing bloc of the Joint List and Meretz 18.
The poll of 530 respondents representing a statistical sample of the Israeli adult population had a margin of error of 4.3 percent.
Asked who is most fit to be prime minister, 33% said Netanyahu, 17% Sa'ar, 10% Yamina leader Naftali Bennett, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid nine percent, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz four percent, none of the above 11% and 16% said they did not know.
When asked if they would back a deal in which Netanyahu would quit politics in return for cancelling his criminal cases, 31% said they would support it, 44% said they would oppose such a deal and 25% said they did not know. Among Likud voters, the numbers were similar, but there was a slight majority for it among those who intend to vote for New Hope and a large majority among Yamina voters.
In response to the lower numbers reported in recent media polls, including the one taken for Ma'ariv and the Post, the Likud Party released an internal poll on Friday showing that it would win 30 seats if the March 23 election would be held now.
"As usual, a lot of fake polls in the media," said the Likud Party in a tweet accompanied with the party's internal poll results. The party claimed that their internal surveys have "been proven accurate in all recent election campaigns."
According to the poll, Sa’ar's New Hope party would trail the Likud with 20 seats, followed by Yesh Atid with 16 seats, Yamina with 11 seats, the Joint List with 11 seats and Shas with eight seats. UTJ and Yisrael Beytenu would each win seven seats, while Meretz would earn six seats. Blue and White would only earn four seats, according to the Likud poll.