The following poll commissioned by Channel 1 News, carried out by the Geocartography Institute was released on Sunday evening 21 Iyar showing the results if elections were held today. The institute is headed by Professor Avi Dagani, who gave his analysis to Kol Chai Radio host Mordechai Lavi on Monday morning 22 Iyar.

The increase in Yahadut Hatorah and decline of Shas he feels is the result of the investigation against Aryeh Deri, Shas’ leader. In addition, he explains most of Shas’ votes do not come from the chareidi sector as many believe, but from the lower socioeconomic voting base as opposed to Yahadut Hatorah, which gets most of its votes from the chareidi sector.

The poll was taken during the coalition crisis between Bayit Yehudi and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, which has since been solved through the efforts of Yaakov Litzman. He also credits Litzman’s ongoing and growing popularity with Yahadut Hatorah’s success.

The surprise is that Yahadut Hatorah moves up from its current six seats to ten and Shas, which currently has seven seats, crashes to the minimum threshold with four seats. Political analysts are reserving judgement in light of the surprising outcome. When asked to comment, Yaakov Litzman told Lavi that he is interested in seeing if other polls show similar results.

Parenthesis shows the party’s current number of seats in Knesset.

Likud 27 (30)

Yesh Atid 21 (11)

Bayit Yehudi 14 (8)

Arab Bloc 13 (13)

Yahadut Hatorah 10 (6)

Yisrael Beitenu 8 (6)

Meretz 8 (5)

Kulanu 7 (10)

Shas 4 (7)

Machane Tzioni 8 (24)

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)