Even Israel’s most experienced poll-takers did not predict the intensity of the “Gideon Saar Phenomenon.”
Indeed, only a day after he quit the Likud on Dec. 8, Saar announced he will compete for premiership in the next elections against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. With this goal in mind, he formed a new right-wing party that has already accumulated in the polls a high double-digit of mandates. Still, similar moves had occurred in the past, in periods when people became fed up with the country’s leadership, period. But in Saar’s case, it is more than that. It is not only a story of a meteoric political rise, but mainly the potential profile of his voters, with many of them drawn from the secular center-left depleted electoral pool.
