Could a centrist politician be Israel's next PM?
Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid is working to attract the support of the Israeli political center, but it seems that he is not the only one aiming at this constituency.
At the beginning of August, a comprehensive study on changes and trends in Israeli public opinion was prepared for Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid by his American strategic adviser, Mark Mellman. Mellman is the one who created Lapid’s successful strategy in the 2013 elections, thus attracting 19 mandates to his party. In the current study, Mellman was asked to produce findings that would sharpen Lapid’s strategic line in a way that would transform him into the only alternative to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and right-wing rule.
While conducting his research, Mellman predicted Lapid’s giant leap in the polls and the transformation of his party to the largest one in the polls. This prediction was indeed confirmed later in a poll by Channel 2, published on Sept. 6. In addition, Mellman’s assessment was that Lapid has even greater potential than that.
According to Mellman’s segmentations, about 53% of the Jewish Israeli public is in the political center, or on the right and left margins of the center. This is a tremendous pool of votes that can achieve about 40 mandates. Go to the political center, Mellman advised Lapid; aim for it, because that’s your route to the premiership. Mellman also pointed out the Israeli public’s rising distaste of the horse-trading politics that is identified with Netanyahu.
Lapid, an obedient campaign soldier, is now working hard to brand himself as the leader of the Israeli political center. He’s neither left nor right; he’s in the middle, in a giant supermarket of opinions and hues that includes religious Jews, secular Jews, settlers and left-wingers, too — each of them can find something there with which they can identify.
