(JTA) — A survey in advance of Israel’s general elections showed the Zionist Union leading the Likud by four seats.
The poll of 1,032 voters, conducted this week by Yedioth Ahronoth and published Friday ahead of the March 17 vote, had the center-left Zionist Union, led by Isaac Herzog and Tzippi Livni, clinching 26 seats in parliament compared to 22 seats for Benjamin Netanyahu’s center-right Likud party.
The poll conducted by the Mina Tzemach polling firm has a 2.5 percent margin of error and is consistent with other polls that showed the Zionist Union maintaining similar leads over the Likud.
A survey published Thursday by Haaretz had Likud with 21 seats compared to Zionist Union’s 24 seats. That poll, which had a 3-percent margin of error, was conducted by the Dialog polling firm among 714 respondents.
In the Yedioth poll, the third-largest party after Likud was the United Arab List with 13 seats, followed by the right-wing Jewish Home with 12 and the secularist Yesh Atid party, which also received 12 seats.
This year’s election is the first time that Israel’s three large Arab parties united into one electoral bloc.
The Orthodox Sephardic Shas Party and its Ashkenazi counterpart, United Torah Judaism, got six and seven seats respectively in the Yedioth poll. Eight seats went to Moshe Kachlon’s centrist Kulanu party.
Avigdor Liberman’s right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu and the left-wing Meretz party both received five seats in the poll.
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