The Likud lost another three seats in the latest Maariv poll published Friday, sliding to 22 and tumbling into a tight three-way race for the title of largest party, as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s slow decline in the surveys continued.

The drop extends a months-long erosion. Since the Iran war broke out on Feb. 28, the Likud has fallen from 27 seats to 25, where it had held steady for three straight weeks before this week’s slide. The new figure is the party’s lowest in a Maariv poll since August 2025.

The poll landed against a turbulent backdrop. Reports indicate Netanyahu called off a major strike on Iran after President Donald Trump warned that Israel would be on its own, and Trump has since suggested Netanyahu may quit politics, a claim the Likud rejects, insisting he will run. Driving much of the coalition turmoil is the government’s accelerated push for legislation that would treat full-time yeshiva students as the equivalent of IDF service members.

At the top, the race has narrowed to a single seat between three parties. The Likud’s 22 seats now sit just ahead of Naftali Bennett’s Together party at 21 and Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar! at 20, with Eisenkot climbing as Bennett slips.

The personal numbers are no better for the prime minister. In head-to-head matchups, Bennett led Netanyahu 43% to 39%, while Eisenkot widened his own edge to 44% against 40% for Netanyahu.

The remaining results broke down as follows. The Democrats took 10 seats, Yisrael Beytenu and Otzma Yehudit 9 each, Shas eight, United Torah Judaism 7, Hadash-Ta’al 6, and Ra’am and Religious Zionism 4 each. Blue and White, Balad and the Reservists all polled below the electoral threshold.

The overall map again left Netanyahu boxed in. As in recent weeks, the coalition fell short of the 61 seats needed to govern, while the anti-Netanyahu bloc held a stable majority. By the poll’s tally, the coalition bloc stood at 50 seats, the Zionist opposition at 60, and the Arab parties at 10.

The chareidi draft issue remains the fault line threatening the government from within. Both Shas and United Torah Judaism quit the coalition this year over its failure to codify the exemption of Chareidi yeshiva students from military service. Tensions sharpened further after Netanyahu moved to advance legislation extending military service without simultaneously advancing the chareidi enlistment bill, a step the chareidi parties viewed as a breach of coalition understandings.

With the next Knesset election due by late October 2026, the survey points to a right-religious bloc that cannot currently assemble a majority and a prime minister losing ground both to rivals and within his own camp.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)