Method
The Reservists leave the table again
The page still says the Netanyahu bloc is slightly ahead, now with about 54 seats, the opposition bloc with 52 and the Arab parties with 14, from 52, 51 and 13. Two of the last six polls give The Reservists-New Economic Party 4 seats, and it is back 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 54 seats, Opposition bloc with 52, and Arab parties with 14. Yesterday it read 52, 51 and 13, with 4 seats for The Reservists-New Economic Party, a list in neither bloc. Those 4 seats are back with the three blocs.
The word is the same. The Netanyahu bloc comes out the larger of the two in 64.0% of simulations, counting a tie as half to each, from 65.8%. “Slightly ahead” runs from 60% to 75%.
Six polls, and the last of them
Six polls are new since yesterday’s update, in the order they were fielded:
- DRI, its own poll with no outside client, 19 to 21 October: 60 seats for the Netanyahu bloc, 47 for the opposition and 13 for the Arab parties
- Maariv (Lazar), 19 to 22 October: 48, 54 and 14, plus 4 for The Reservists-New Economic Party
- i24NEWS (Direct Polls), 22 October: 59, 47 and 14
- Channel 12 (Midgam), 22 and 23 October: 50, 56 and 14
- Channel 13 (HaMadad), published 23 October: 50, 54 and 16
- Kan 11 (Kantar), published 23 October: 50, 52 and 14, plus 4 for The Reservists-New Economic Party
The last two were reported without fieldwork dates and are dated to the day they were published. Together the six carry 19.0% of the weight in today’s average. Maariv’s is the poll this site said yesterday was missing from both sources. Israel Hayom’s poll of 22 October, dated yesterday to the day it was published, now has its fieldwork dates, 21 and 22 October. There are now 101 polls in the window, from 97: six added and two aged out.
The law bars publishing a poll from the end of Friday, 23 October, until the vote closes on Tuesday. These are the last polls this forecast will read, unless a source adds one published before the ban. The forecast counts each poll’s age from today, three days before the vote, so on the same polls and the same lists it will not move between now and Tuesday.
The Reservists-New Economic Party
Maariv and Kan 11 give the list 4 seats; the other four new polls put it under the threshold. It now wins seats in 49 simulations in 100, from 53, and the table seats a list only when it wins seats in at least half of them. This is the third day running that it has crossed that line: it left the table on 22 October and came back on 23 October.
The line is close, but the simulations are not unsure which side of it the list is on. Resampled at random, today’s simulations put it under the line every time, 400 times in 400, and give the three blocs the same 54, 52 and 14 every time. The polls are what is close: leave out any one of the four that put the list under the threshold and it is back just above half, and in the table. On yesterday’s polls alone, counted at today’s date, it would still be in the table, and the table would still read 52, 51 and 13: the move is the new polls, not the calendar.
So the table again shares all 120 seats among the three blocs, in proportion to the seats each is expected to win. Against yesterday’s table, the Netanyahu bloc gains 2 seats (Otzma Yehudit and Shas), the opposition 1 (Yashar) and the Arab parties 1 (the Joint List).
Achi withdraws
Achi, one of the lists on the ballot, said yesterday that it would not run and told its supporters to vote Likud. No poll gives it a seat, but the forecast had still given it seats in 6 simulations in 100, as it does any list on the ballot that the polls put only under the threshold. It is now out of the forecast, as Blue and White has been since it withdrew on 19 October. Taking it out moves no seat in the table.
The rest
Neither bloc is near a majority. The Netanyahu bloc reaches 61 seats in 0.5% of simulations, from 0.7%, and the opposition in 0.2%, as yesterday. The opposition bloc and the Arab parties reach 61 between them in 90.1%, from 88.7%. 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.
Amcha Israel wins seats in 35 simulations in 100, from 39, so the table still gives it none, and its seats stay in the Netanyahu bloc. Of the six new polls, only i24NEWS’s gives it 4.
The table has Likud and Yashar with 23 seats each. The simulations do not separate them: Likud wins more seats in 43.6%, Yashar in 42.2%, and they tie in 14.2%.