Note
The Joint List re-formed. We still count two
Hadash, Ta'al and Balad re-formed on 19 August. Two of the three polls in the field that night reported the merged list; the corpus files what they found under Hadash-Ta'al, and will not fold Balad into it until a source publishes the new list as a list of its own.
Written on 23 August 2026, and settled on the 27th. Wikipedia gave the Joint List a column of its own that day, and Channel 13’s poll of 26 August files 10 seats under it — which is the condition the last section here names. The fold is now in
lineage.yaml, so the forecast reports one row where it reported two: the Joint List with 6 seats, and neither Hadash-Ta’al nor Balad drawn on its own any more. What follows describes the page as it stood before that.
On 19 August, Hadash, Ta’al and Balad re-formed the Joint List. The three polls in the field that night do not agree on what to do about it.
Kantar, for Israel Hayom, put the merged list at 8 seats. Yossi Tatika, for Zman Yisrael, put it at 7. Lazar Research, for Maariv — the firm this site’s tables call Panels Politics — kept the two apart: Hadash-Ta’al with 6 seats, and Balad below the threshold at 1.2%. All three have Ra’am running alone with 5 seats, so this is two lists becoming one, not the Arab parties becoming one.
What it did to the forecast
Both columns below are the same model at the same cutoff, 23 August. The only difference between them is which snapshot of the polling compilations it read.
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| Netanyahu bloc | 54 | 54 |
| Opposition bloc | 56 | 55 |
| Arab parties | 10 | 11 |
| Netanyahu bloc reaches 61 | 5.6% | 4.7% |
| Opposition bloc reaches 61 | 14.3% | 15.9% |
| Opposition and Arab parties together reach 61 | 90.5% | 92.0% |
One seat crossed between blocs and it is Hadash-Ta’al’s: its median rose from 5 to 6, because 2 of the 72 polls behind it now report a list that has Balad inside it. Together did not fall. Its median is 12 in both runs, and what it lost is a remainder — with every list on its median the chamber came to 117 seats before and 118 after, so the allocator had 3 seats to place by largest remainder and now has 2.
Nobody reaches 61 in either column. The opposition and the Arab parties come to 66 seats between them, which is arithmetic and not a coalition: two lists hold those 11 seats, and neither has agreed anything with anyone.
The same fetch also removed a poll. i24NEWS’s Direct Polls survey was in the corpus twice, once dated 17 August from the compilation and once dated 18 August from Wikipedia; the compilation has corrected its date, and the two records are now one.
Why Balad is still on the page
The forecast still shows Balad as a list of its own, winning seats in 31 of 100 simulations. That is deliberate, and it is the rule this project applies to every merger: a list is folded into the one that absorbed it only from the first date the successor has itself been polled. The trigger is an observation rather than a date somebody typed in, so no forecast can be made using a merger that had not happened when it was made.
The reunified Joint List has not been polled under a name of its own. Wikipedia merges the two cells its table already had; the 2026 compilation writes a combined label. In both, one figure covers two columns — and a figure covering two columns is filed under the first of them, with a flag recording that it is not that list’s own. The table names that row for the group it now is: Joint List (Hadash-Ta’al–Balad). Its 6 seats carry support that is Balad’s in 2 of the polls behind them, and Balad’s 31-in-100 is a statement about the 48 polls that still measure it alone, every one of which puts it under the 3.25% threshold.
What would settle it
A source publishing the reunified list as a list. That is how the 2015 Joint List and the September 2019 reunification became foldable, and when it happens here the fold activates on its own: two lines become one, the seats behind them do not change hands, and one list leaves the group at risk of winning nothing. A list polling 7 and 8 seats is not near the threshold. Balad alone has been under it in all 48 polls that measure it.