Jewish Home Chairman Naftali Bennett told Arutz Sheva early Tuesday evening that reports from activists on the ground indicate a “massive” loss of votes to the Likud party.
"I am returning from Holon, Bat Yam, Be'er Sheva, Kiryat Gat, Kiryat Malachi and am on my way to Jerusalem right now, our staffs have reported to us and our situation is not so good,” he said.
"There is a massive suction of votes from the Jewish Home to Likud, including the real core of cores of religious Zionism,” Bennett said. “A feeling that Likud is trying to crush us.”
"I think that would be a very big mistake, since we learned that a large Likud with a small Jewish Home is a very dangerous thing,” he said. “It led to the Disengagement, it led to the Hevron Accord, it led to the Bar Ilan speech.”
Regarding the voters who are voting Likud in order to keep Labor from defeating it by a large margin, Bennett said: "I cannot say that the feelings are good right now. I call on the public to vote from the heart, not make these calculations, because in the end, it will cause us very serious damage.”
"I do not know what the motive is,” Bennett said. “Right now, I feel that a great number of votes are moving from the Jewish Home to Likud, and Likud is in a very good situation in any case. We must say that what counts is the number of people who will recommend [a candidate] to the President. If you vote Likud, you get the Wye Accords, the Bar Ilan speech, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni, Arik Sharon, these are the facts.”
Regarding the flow of Jewish Home votes to Yachad - Ha'am Itanu, Bennett said: “If we want to put Orit Struk in the Knesset and not some Sasson Trebelsi (a Yachad candidate - ed.) then we need to concentrate the effort.”
He added, however, that despite the concern, “I am optimistic, because there are still quite a few hours left and these are the main hours, we can still sober up, we must not let this happen, that we will have a single digit result, and not necessarily a high one.”
"We must concentrate efforts in the next hours so that there is a large Jewish Home, otherwise there will be no one to represent religious Zionism and the Land of Israel," he claimed, despite Yachad being both a religious Zionist and haredi party.