Likud is Not Going Down!

PELONI:  Netanyahu needs the support of the Haredi parties.  This is true today as it was true thirty years ago during Netanyahu’s first term as PM.

Shlomo Filber | X | Sept 18, 2026

PM Netanyahu speaks in the Knesset. Photo by Itzhak Harari / Knesset Archives, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikipedia

Likud is not going down!

“By all measures,” as they like to say in medicine, it is getting stronger.

Both the phenomenon of “returning home” and the undecided voters who are returning to support [it].

So why do “all the polls” insist on claiming that despite the right-wing bloc getting stronger, Likud is actually going down?

Two possibilities.

1. Eisenkot’s strategy is the establishment of a minority government with Arab support. And he decided that only “if Yashar [is] immediately the largest party by a margin of at least 7 mandates, we will be able to demand the mandate from the president.”

Eisenkot has been at around 21–23 mandates in everyone’s polls for months. And Likud is at 20 in their polls. It is impossible to bump Yashar up to 27. But it is possible to artificially bring Likud down. In the opposition bloc, they are relying mainly on “suppressing turnout” on the right. Likud / Haredim / burning votes — everything goes. So Likud dropping to 18 serves this strategy.

Another option.

We are approaching the finish line, and soon “all the pollsters” will be forced to deal with the reality that there are not 10 right-wing mandates that have moved to Bennett and Lapid.

What do they do? They begin to straighten themselves out. In the meantime, return them through the centrist parties — Winter and Zelkha.

And therefore Eisenkot’s bloc has dropped for them from 61 to 54. Zelkha and Winter receive these mandates, and later (probably after October 7) they will continue migrating back home to the right.

No one in the media will reach 61+, but there is a chance we will see 58–59 toward the end.

On Channel 14, yesterday we presented 64 for the right-wing bloc for the third time.

Shabbat shalom.