I mentioned earlier this week that the ‘Zionist Camp’/Labor party had again opened up a very thin lead over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party in the fast-approaching Israeli election. Now we’re two days post-Apocalypse Speech. So how has it played so far in Israel?
We have our first indications. And it seems to match the hopes of neither party. The first two polls released just after the speech shows what the right-leaning Jerusalem Post calls — I think rightly — “a modest gain” for the Likud. One poll from Channel 10 shows Likud gaining two seats and moving into a tie with ZC/Labor. A Midgam poll for Channel 2 shows a one-seat gain, leaving ZC/Labor remaining with a one seat lead.
A third non-public poll, I’m told, shows no change at all.
So not the solid jump into the lead Likud was hoping for or the flatline ZC/Labor wanted.
Yesterday Anshel Pfeffer published this analysis in Haaretz which painted quite a bleak picture for Netanyahu’s electoral foes, suggesting that the speech had essentially knocked the wind out of his opponents and left the election his to lose. That struck me as considerably out ahead of the available evidence. But he’s a professional analyst of Israeli politics, a native Israeli and Hebrew speaker and he’s there. So I do not discount his take. But, right or wrong, this point seems rock solid …
If the polls this weekend show that the speech had no effect on the electorate, Netanyahu will be in trouble. But all he needs is about 30,000 Likudniks who were planning to vote for Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu party and a similar number who were thinking of voting for Habayit Hayehudi to “return home,” and he will be in pole position again. What else can be done in 10 days for Likud’s rivals to regain momentum?
One day out is too soon to know in either direction. The polls at the end of this weekend will be very telling.
And there’s a final point that Pfeffer alludes to which is very important. I do not think Netanyahu is concerned or focused on building the numbers of the center-right bloc. He doesn’t need to and doesn’t seem able to. Indeed, the second of the two polls I referenced showed the center-right bloc losing two seats over the last week even as the Likud gained one – though it’s important to remember such small movements could all be statistical noise.
If Netanyahu can bleed a few seats from Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home party and one or two more from Yisrael Beytenu or Kulanu, he can open up a lead over ZC/Labor, get the first chance to form a government, in all likelihood be able to form it and he’s back to being Prime Minister. The kind of fire and brimstone, stick in the face of Israel’s (perceived) enemies politics that the speech represented is exactly the kind of thing that appeals to the Israeli far right – where Bennett gets his support. So it is quite possible that the speech could be a wash or even a net negative for Netanyahu in the electorate at large and yet allow him to retain his office because of how it plays within the right and hard right.
Again, the polls by the end of the weekend will be very telling.
