A joint right-wing ticket of the Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionist Party would win 12 seats in the Knesset if elections were held today, a new poll shows.
The poll, conducted by Panels Politics and published Monday morning by Radio 103FM, is the first survey to poll likely voters following Friday’s agreement between Otzma Yehudit chairman MK Itamar Ben-Gvir and Religious Zionist Party chief MK Bezalel Smotrich for a joint run.
The two factions ran with the small Noam party in last year’s election, winning six seats.
The previous Panels Politics poll, released on August 19th, showed that if the two parties ran separately, they would win a total of 12 seats, though the Religious Zionist Party ran the risk of falling below the 3.25% electoral threshold. Otzma Yehudit received seven seats in the poll, compared to five for the Religious Zionist Party.
Another Panels Politics poll conducted earlier in August showed a joint ticket winning just nine seats.
Despite the strong showing in the poll for the joint rightist slate, the pro-Netanyahu bloc remains below the 61 seats needed to form a government, with just 59 seats.
The center-left - Arab bloc received 56 seats, with five more seats going to the right-of-center Yisrael Beytenu party.
The Likud remains the largest party with 32 seats, followed by Yesh Atid with 23, and the joint ticket of the Blue and White party with the New Hope faction at 13 seats.
Among the haredi factions, Shas held steady at eight seats, followed by United Torah Judaism with seven.
The Joint Arab List maintained its six seats in the poll, while the United Arab List remains just over the minimum threshold with four.
Labor received five seats, as did the far-left Meretz party.
Yamina again failed to cross the electoral threshold.