Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu's next goal is to make sure that Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party does not pass the electoral threshold, Daphna Liel of Channel 12 News reported on Saturday night.
According to Liel’s report, Netanyahu’s people are in contact with leaders from the community of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, in an attempt to convince them to run for the Knesset and take away votes from Liberman.
Netanyahu also intends to invest in a negative campaign against Liberman among Russian speakers, which should also help such a party seeking to take votes away from Yisrael Beytenu.
On Friday, a poll published in the Maariv newspaper found that Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party is gaining on the Likud.
If new elections were held today, the Likud would remain the largest faction in the Knesset with 31 seats, an increase of one seat compared to the 30 the party won last year. Yesh Atid, by contrast, rose one seat to 24 seats, according to the new poll.
Broken down by blocs, the Likud and its allies on the right are projected to win a total of 58 seats, while the center-left-Arab bloc rises from 56 seats to 57, with five seats going to the Yisrael Beytenu.