On Dec. 8, just a few hours before the 19th Knesset voted on its premature dissolution, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu entered — perhaps for the last time in his capacity as premier — the spacious conference room of the Likud faction in the Knesset.

It was a particularly tense weekend for Netanyahu, following his failure to persuade Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman to agree to the introduction into the government of the ultra-Orthodox — a move by which Netanyahu sought to stop in its tracks the galloping election train, which he perceived all of a sudden as destructive and menacing.

The anti-Bibi buzz, which swept the political establishment and the media lately, gaining momentum in the last few days, has further deepened the prime minister's gloom. Anyone who happened to talk with him over the last weekend — and there were quite a few — could tell that Netanyahu seemed to be stressed and frantic, and repeatedly changed his instructions and plans of action, until the wee hours of the night.

The survey broadcast Dec. 8 on the Knesset Channel, which forecast 23 seats for the emerging united party of Labor Chairman Yitzhak Herzog and Hatnua leader Tzipi Livni — as against only 21 seats for the Netanyahu-led Likud Party — has probably intensified the sense of loss of control the prime minister is experiencing at the moment. And, of course, there are all those other surveys, which point to the cumulative erosion in Netanyahu's public standing and the declining percentages of support for his candidacy for the premiership. That kind of support, which Netanyahu enjoyed in recent years, has been his main strength in relation to any other candidate. Now, this safety net of his is threatening to tear apart.