Avi Gabbay’s election as chairman of the Labor Party on July 10 has renewed the battle for the leadership of the center-left bloc with Yair Lapid, the chairman of Yesh Atid. While Gabbay declared on the night of his surprising election that his win is the start of the journey to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the road there is very long, and it passes through Lapid’s parliamentary seats.

Gabbay’s first success in this journey is returning Labor to the top of the center-left camp in polls conducted immediately after the primaries. His party shot up past Yesh Atid and theoretically would "win back" several of the seats that have gradually shifted in polls to Yesh Atid since the 2015 election. As for voters from the right-wing bloc, so far Gabbay has succeeded in moving just a few of them, mostly from his former patron Moshe Kahlon, the chairman of the Kulanu Party.

The polls were published on the leading news channels a day after Gabbay’s victory, and they got dramatic headlines. But if you factor in the enthusiasm for the new and relatively anonymous player who took over the Labor Party with hardly any political experience, you see that there’s no significant change in the division of the right-wing and left-wing blocs. Netanyahu, despite a slight decline in the polls, is still the man expected to lead the largest party in Israel in the next election, and the only one who could put together a coalition.

According to Channel 2’s poll, the Likud would win 25 seats, the Zionist Union (composed of the Labor Party and the Hatnua Party) headed by Gabbay would win 20 seats and Yesh Atid 18. In Channel 10’s poll, the Likud would win 29 seats, the Zionist Union 24, and Yesh Atid only 16. In response to the question of who is best suited to be prime minister, Netanyahu ranked significantly ahead of Gabbay and Lapid, who came in about even.