Israeli pollsters put Likud at 26 and at 18 in the same nine days
With the vote on 27 October, three Israeli outlets published irreconcilable numbers for the governing party while both blocs sat on a knife edge. The spread is the finding.
On 8 October, i24NEWS published a Direct Polls survey, conducted by the firm headed by Zuriel Sharon, putting Likud on 26 seats, down two on the prior week. On Friday 16 October, Arutz Sheva reported a new Maariv poll placing Likud on 18, down two, with Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar first on 21, the Arab parties up one seat each to a combined 14 — described as a record — and the blocs tied at 51–51. Between those two, the Jerusalem Post published a Lazar Research poll fielded 7–8 October showing the blocs level at 52–52, with the Democrats on nine, Yisrael Beytenu on nine and Otzma Yehudit on eight. The JPost gave its methodology: Lazar Research with Panel4ALL, headed by Dr Menachem Lazar, 4,667 people invited and 700 completed against a 700 target, Jewish and Arab respondents aged 18 and over. The Maariv poll’s pollster, field dates and sample size were not carried in the report that reached this desk, and Arutz Sheva is a right-wing, settler-aligned outlet relaying someone else’s survey rather than conducting its own.
The arithmetic that matters is not the seat counts but who will sit with whom. Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman said on 15 October that he will not join a government with Netanyahu “under any circumstances,” committing to a coalition of Zionist parties only; the Times of Israel liveblog noted the same day that the Netanyahu bloc lacks a clear path to a majority. Within forty-eight hours Liberman had turned on the other side, accusing Eisenkot of seeking a unity government with Likud and calling him “Gantz 2.” Eisenkot, per the ToI standfirst, urged Israelis who want Netanyahu out to “ignore the spin” and said he is working to secure “more than 61 Zionist seats for change” on 27 October. Diplomatic early voting has already begun: Israel’s ambassador to Zambia, Ofra Farhi, cast her ballot in Lusaka on 15 October.
Assessment: An eight-seat gap on the governing party, between two Israeli pollsters nine days apart, is not a trend — it is a warning about the instrument. Readers will be shown these numbers as movement; most of it is house effect, sampling and the treatment of undecided and Arab voters, and only one of the three polls published enough methodology to be argued with. Watch the published-methodology test, not the headline seat count. The substantive story is Liberman’s double refusal: he has ruled out Netanyahu and is pre-emptively delegitimising a Likud–Yashar unity deal, which is the one configuration that would let the system resolve a 51–51 result without a fourth election.