There is only one more month until the Israeli elections take place March 17, and we are getting a much clearer picture of what is actually happening. This was supposed to be a multiparty race, with five or six midsized parties or coalitions — the Likud with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Zionist Camp with Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni, Naftali Bennett (HaBayit HaYehudi), Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beitenu), Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) and Moshe Kahlon (Kulanu) — but it has turned into a head-to-head clash between Netanyahu and Zionist Camp Chair Herzog. Livni, Herzog’s partner in the Zionist Camp, has been pushed to the sidelines for concerns about her electoral pull (as Mazal Mualem reported here), after initially helping Herzog shoot up almost overnight into being almost on par with Netanyahu in terms of strength.
The balance of power between Netanyahu and Herzog places them in a dead heat. A rundown of the polls published over the past two weeks shows them head-to-head, with 25 seats each. The fact that this has become a race between the two men has been severely damaging to the other parties, which are regarded as increasingly less relevant. Bennett is plummeting in the polls, because his electorate is determined to “save the right” by voting for Netanyahu. Lapid is unable to leap ahead for the exact same reason. Kahlon and Liberman are in an even worse state. Then there are these three conspicuous additional factors:
