“We’re just two seats away from victory. I need you. We can only win if we do it together,” Netanyahu tweeted Feb. 27. Flanking a picture of him looking off into the horizon was a link for potential volunteers to join a phone bank on election day. The purpose of that phone bank is to get Likud voters out to vote.

The message is that “Victory is within reach” — with “victory” meaning 61 seats without Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party. Netanyahu has been repeating it every evening at packed rallies and campaign events at Likud strongholds throughout the country, as well as on his social media accounts and in interviews with the media. He seems ready at any time or place to talk about the 300,000 Likud supporters who did not vote in the September 2019 election. Some were driven by sheer apathy, while others were convinced that a Likud victory was a certainty in any case. Everyone knows how it turned out.

This message lies at the heart of Netanyahu’s current campaign. It is the engine and force driving it forward. As a strategy, it is the exact opposite of what Netanyahu did in previous elections. In the past, he used negative messaging to intimidate the right by claiming that “right-wing rule is at risk.” The “disaster” campaign identified with Netanyahu had some major successes in past elections, including the election of 2015.  Back then, Netanyahu warned voters that right-wing rule is in danger, because Arabs were heading to the polls in droves.

Netanyahu used the same technique in his last two election campaigns. He warned repeatedly in a hoarse voice that “[Blue and White leaders] Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid are ahead by 4-5 seats, and will soon be forming a left-wing government.” At one of the most climactic moments of the April election, right before people went to the polls, Netanyahu showed up in Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market at dusk, all decked out in a suit and tie. Standing on top of one of the stands, he shouted into a microphone, “It may be late, but not too late. … If you don’t go out to vote, you’ll wake up tomorrow morning with Yair Lapid as head of a left-wing government. Get out and vote. … Don’t believe the media. The election is not in our pocket.” Netanyahu did the same thing at bus stations, the beach and in videos he produced. Then election night came around, and he failed to win 61 seats. The same thing happened in the September election.