{"id":568254,"date":"2026-07-31T07:35:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T07:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/568254\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T07:35:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T07:35:08","slug":"likud-rises-to-22-seats-but-coalition-still-lacks-a-path-to-a-knesset-majority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/568254\/","title":{"rendered":"Likud rises to 22 seats, but coalition still lacks a path to a Knesset majority"},"content":{"rendered":"

Likud gained two seats this week, rising to 22, amid Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s visit to Washington, his meeting with US President Donald Trump<\/a>, and the party\u2019s campaign against the Democrats following their primaries.<\/p>\n

Despite Likud\u2019s gains, the coalition bloc remained unchanged at 49 seats, according to a Maariv poll conducted by Lazar Research, headed by Dr. Menachem Lazar, in cooperation with Panel4All.<\/p>\n

The change bloc also fell short of the 61 seats needed for a majority, receiving 57 seats. However, the Zionist Home party, led by Chili Tropper and Yoaz Hendel<\/a>, crossed the electoral threshold with four seats, potentially giving the bloc a majority.<\/p>\n

The poll also found that a new party led by Benny Gantz, Ayelet Shaked, Yuli Edelstein, and Dedi Simchi would receive 3.8% of the vote, equivalent to four seats.<\/p>\n

The new party\u2019s most significant effect would be to push Tropper and Hendel\u2019s party below the electoral threshold, with only 2.4% support.<\/p>\n

Under that scenario, the coalition bloc would gain one seat, rising to 50. The Zionist opposition bloc would lose one seat, falling to 56, while the Arab parties would remain at 10 seats.<\/p>\n

Among respondents planning to vote for opposition parties, 45% said Gadi Eisenkot<\/a> should lead the center-left bloc in the next Knesset election. Naftali Bennett<\/a> was chosen by 25%, followed by Avigdor Liberman with 11% and Yair Golan with 10%. An additional 9% said they did not know.<\/p>\n

Bennett led Netanyahu by five percentage points when respondents were asked who was better suited to serve as prime minister, receiving 44% support compared with Netanyahu\u2019s 39%. The gap was one percentage point wider than in the previous poll.<\/p>\n

Eisenkot led Netanyahu by 10 percentage points, receiving 48% support compared with Netanyahu\u2019s 38%. This was the largest gap recorded since the poll began comparing the two.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu led Liberman with 43% support, compared with 39% for Liberman.<\/p>\n

The poll was conducted on July 29 and 30 among 501 respondents representing Israel\u2019s adult population, including Jews and Arabs. The maximum sampling error was 4.4 percentage points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Likud gained two seats this week, rising to 22, amid Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s visit to Washington, his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[147752,49,4410,955,85,46,58195,43],"class_list":["post-568254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-2026-israeli-elections","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-elections","tag-gadi-eisenkot","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israel-elections-2026","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}