Method
Amcha Israel leaves the table
The page still says the Netanyahu bloc is slightly ahead, now with about 53 seats, the opposition bloc with 50 and the Arab parties with 13, from 52, 51 and 13. Three polls of 18 October moved a seat between the two large blocs in the rounding, by less than three hundredths of a seat, and took Amcha Israel under the half at which the table gives a list seats.
The top of the forecast page now reads Netanyahu bloc is slightly ahead with about 53 seats, Opposition bloc with 50, and Arab parties with 13. Since 16 October it had read 52, 51 and 13. The other 4 seats are still in the table under The Reservists-New Economic Party, a list in neither bloc.
The word is the same. The Netanyahu bloc comes out the larger of the two in 65.3% of simulations, counting a tie as half to each, from 61.6%. “Slightly ahead” runs from 60% to 75%.
Three polls
Three polls are new since the update of 18 October, all fielded that day:
- Kan 11 (Kantar): 51 seats for the Netanyahu bloc, 52 for the opposition and 13 for the Arab parties, plus 4 for The Reservists-New Economic Party
- i24NEWS (Direct Polls): 57, 49 and 14
- Channel 14 (Next Data): 61, 46 and 13
Together they carry 13.2% of the weight in today’s average; Channel 14’s counts at half weight. The window now holds 83 polls, from 77: the three new ones, and three of 23 and 24 August that count again. Those three carry 0.3% of the weight between them, and without them the table is the same.
The seat
In the simulations the Netanyahu bloc’s average rose by about a fifth of a seat and the opposition bloc’s fell by about a third. The Arab parties’ average barely moved.
The table shares the 120 seats in proportion: each bloc by the seats it is expected to win, and The Reservists-New Economic Party by its size when it is in, 4. Whole seats come to 117, and the 3 left over go to the largest remainders. The Reservists’ and the Arab parties’ took two of them. The third lay between the two large blocs. On 18 October the opposition bloc’s remainder was larger by about half a seat. Today the Netanyahu bloc’s is larger by less than three hundredths of a seat.
A gap that small is close to the simulations’ own noise. Resampled at random, today’s simulations give the seat to the Netanyahu bloc 75 times in 100 and to the opposition bloc 25 times.
Part of that margin is a list no poll gave a figure. Kan 11 and i24NEWS both named Black Color below the threshold without a share. On those two readings it is now in the forecast, and it wins seats in 7 simulations in 100, as Achi, Haredi Public and Noam each do. Those figures come from the uncertainty the model puts around every list, not from any poll, and the seats such a list wins in a simulation come out of everyone else’s. Run without Black Color, the same polls give 52, 51 and 13, and the Netanyahu bloc comes out the larger in 65.0% rather than 65.3%. Black Color is running, so it stays in the forecast.
Amcha Israel
All three new polls put Amcha Israel below the threshold, at 3.1%, 2.9% and 2.4%. Its chance of winning seats fell from 55 in 100 to 48, under the half at which the table gives a list seats, so the table no longer gives it 4.
Those seats stay in the Netanyahu bloc, because the bloc’s total comes from the seats it is expected to win, not from its lists. Inside the bloc they go, with the seat the bloc gained in the rounding, to the lists that remain: Likud goes from 21 to 23, and Otzma Yehudit, Shas and United Torah Judaism from 7 to 8 each. Religious Zionism keeps 6 and wins seats in 98 simulations in 100.
The rest
Neither bloc is near a majority. The Netanyahu bloc reaches 61 seats in 1.4% of simulations, as on 18 October, and the opposition in 0.5%, from 0.6%. The opposition bloc and the Arab parties reach 61 between them in 82.3%, from 84.5%. That is arithmetic about seats and nothing more: those seats belong to lists that do not act as one, and no coalition is modelled here.
The Reservists-New Economic Party won 4 seats in Kan 11’s poll and fell below the threshold in the other two, at 2.4% in each. Its chance of winning seats fell from 56 in 100 to 54, so the table keeps its 4 seats. Under 50 in 100, the table would hand them back to all three blocs.
The table has Likud with 23 seats and Yashar with 21, from 21 and 22. The gap comes from sharing each bloc’s seats among its lists. At their size when they are in, the Netanyahu bloc’s lists come to 52 and share 53 seats; the opposition bloc’s come to 51 and share 50. In the simulations Yashar wins more seats in 45.1%, Likud in 43.3%, and they tie in 11.6%.