Israeli Press
Poll finds coalition at 51 seats after Smotrich-Feiglin merger
Israeli PressGraphic: Times of Palestine
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A new poll reported by The Jerusalem Post puts Israel's governing coalition at 51 Knesset seats, its strongest showing since May, after Bezalel Smotrich's Religious Zionism merged with Moshe Feiglin's faction and Yechiel "Winter" launched a new "People of Israel" list that the paper said also boosted the bloc's numbers.
The same poll found 40 percent of Israelis believe there was "betrayal from within" during the 7 October massacre, against 44 percent who reject that characterization and 16 percent unsure, the Post reported — a finding that speaks to the accountability debate running alongside the campaign itself rather than to any party's seat count.
Why the seat count matters for the Arab lists#
At 51 seats, the coalition remains short of the 61-seat majority needed to govern alone, a gap the Post's own reporting elsewhere has tied to the arithmetic facing the reunified Hadash-Ta'al-Balad list and the separately-running Ra'am — both polling combined in the low teens, seats no bloc has committed to using even as the governing side falls short without some path past 61.
What the poll does not settle#
The Post's report did not name the polling institute's sample size or margin of error in the seat figures cited, a gap in the sourcing this outlet flags rather than adopts. Merger announcements this close to an election frequently move published seat projections before they move actual votes; the 27 October result remains the only figure that will settle the count.
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