Israel Election Yisrael Beiteinu Vote Share prediction

Yisrael Beiteinu is polling at eight or nine seats in the latest surveys reported before the October 27 election. A Channel 12 News poll on October 12 gave it nine seats. A Kantar poll reported on October 11 had it dropping one seat to eight. A separate poll reported on October 16 also put it at eight, level with Otzma Yehudit, the Joint List and United Torah Judaism. That is why the forecast leans against the party falling below 5% of the vote. Seat counts are not vote shares, and I have no vote percentage for the party. But in a 120-seat Knesset, a party polling at eight or nine seats is well above the level of parties that are failing to cross the threshold in the same surveys. The Kantar poll showed Blue and White at 0.9 percent, below the threshold. Channel 12 showed Amcha Yisrael and Blue and White at zero seats. Avigdor Liberman, the party's leader, also features in a Maariv poll as a head-to-head prime ministerial challenger. Netanyahu led him 43% to 37%. That suggests the party has a visible national profile, though it says little about its vote share. The risk is a late shift. The Kantar poll found 30 percent of respondents had not yet decided how to vote, and its margin of error was 4.2 percentage points. Watch whether Yisrael Beiteinu slips below eight seats in the final polls before October 27.