David Isaac
JNS, Oct. 30, 2022
“… the key to this election is the turnout—who is voting and from which areas. Knowing where people are voting tells you more about who will win than asking individuals for whom they will vote,”
Polls show opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu either eking out a victory in Tuesday’s election or falling just short of a majority. Final surveys released last week said he will come up short. If his “natural coalition” misses the mark, can he still form a government?
It will be difficult for Netanyahu if he ends up with 60 seats in the incoming Knesset, just one short shy of the 61-seat majority he needs, Jonathan Rynhold, head of the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, said.
“The natural thing for him to do would be to try and do what he did in times past, which is nab one [Knesset member] here or there by offering them whatever they want,” Rynhold told JNS. “But a lot of those people have been burned so that if he doesn’t get 61, I think it’ll be very difficult for him. His big problem is that if nobody can form a government, then [Yair] Lapid continues to be [caretaker] prime minister.”
Rynhold believes that could spell the end of Netanyahu’s career. “I’m not saying he’ll disappear straight away, but people don’t support him because they like him, they support them because he wins,” he said.
Netanyahu’s future might then depend on what his long-time allies, the ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, decide: “The haredim will start to think that maybe they should just cut their losses and go with Benny Gantz.” … source