At the beginning of August, the campaign headquarters of one of the country’s center-left parties got the results of an especially comprehensive study. The long list of questions examined how committed voters were to the ruling right-wing Likud. The center-left party that commissioned the poll was hoping to use this information in order to put together a campaign that would convince supporters of the soft right to transfer their support from the ruling party to them.
Experts in political campaigns know that in-depth questionnaires like this provide pollsters with a more accurate view of the situation than questions asking whether respondents plan to vote for one party or the other. Indeed, polled voters who claim they intend to support ultra-Orthodox parties are usually considered particularly reliable, give or take a small percentage of people not responding honestly. No in-depth questions are needed to determine their exact state of mind. But this is not the case when it comes to parties with a vaster and more heterogenic constituency. Here, in-depth questionnaires are critical to any real understanding of how things are unfolding on the ground.
What stood out about this study was the high confidence among Likud supporters in how they plan to vote on Sept. 17. Over 90% of respondents said they are sure they will vote for the Likud in the next election. The older the voters were, the more confident they were in how they would vote. Some 95% of respondents aged 55 and older were what pollsters call “ironclad” voters. In other words, they were unwilling to consider voting for another party, even if it is on the right.
These figures tell pollsters that center-left strategists, who had hoped at the start of their campaigns to attract disappointed Likud voters, have been unable to do so — at least so far. This includes Chairman of Labor-Gesher Amir Peretz, senior Democratic Camp member Ehud Barak, and the entire leadership of the Blue and White party. Mirroring this is the lack of movement from the center-left to the right. The only person to shuffle the deck is Chairman of Yisrael Beitenu Avigdor Liberman, apparently because he removed himself from this game of blocs. Liberman is pushing for a national unity government and refuses to commit to joining any of the political blocs in a future coalition.
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