Knesset member Orly Levy-Abekasis announced the establishment of a new party March 6. Opinion polls published in the days that followed were flattering, and it seems that the old, established parties with strong social platforms have reason to be worried. True, her latest achievement exists only on paper, but the recent Hadashot poll that awarded her new party five seats is telling.

Intriguingly, the poll gave her more support than the leader of her former party Yisrael Beitenu, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman. The poll gave him only four seats, meaning that he could find himself below the threshold and out of the Knesset in the next election. Levy-Abekasis left Yisrael Beitenu in a huff in May 2016, when she was excluded from negotiations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that eventually put Liberman in the Defense Ministry. Liberman also decided not to make Levy-Abekasis a minister even though she was second on his list and a highly regarded Knesset member in her own right with an impressive record of social legislation.

No less interesting than the emerging battle between Liberman and his former protege is the way that this young Knesset member, who focuses on social issues such as public housing and the rights of women and children, has surpassed both the current defense minister and a former one, Moshe Ya’alon. According to the poll, Ya’alon, who is also trying to form a new party, would not meet the electoral threshold.

Also trailing behind her is the chairman of Shas, Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, who was also given just four seats and is teetering on the electoral threshold. Another man who could suffer from Levy-Abekasis’ momentum is the chairman of Kulanu, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon. Though Kahlon was once branded as a powerful social warrior, the most recent poll gives him only six seats, almost half of what he won in the last election.