new pre-election poll, conducted exclusively for The Times of Israel, shows that a remarkable 31 percent of likely voters in the January 22 elections remain undecided.
The perceptions, ideology, and demographics of that undecided bloc lean slightly more to the center-left than to the right, suggesting that the final two weeks of the campaign may see a narrowing of the gap between the right-wing and center-left blocs. It may be that the profusion of center-left parties has resulted in a relatively substantial proportion of center-left voters weighing their options even at this late stage.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-Beytenu will still almost certainly win the most seats, and will almost certainly be better placed than the center-left parties to build the next coalition, the survey indicates, but the margins of his victory may well be narrower than most recent polls have suggested, and his coalition dilemmas more complex.
Formulated by The Times of Israel and the author, from the political consultancy firm (202) Strategies, with field work conducted by TRI-Strategic Research between December 25 and January 2, our survey is the most accurate publicly available poll to date, having questioned a relatively large sample of 803 likely voters — as opposed to the Hebrew media’s norm of 500 eligible voters. Of those 803, also in contrast to the Hebrew media norm, 10% of our surveys were conducted by cellphone, and another 10% were conducted in Arabic.
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