Poll: Bayit Yehudi gains at Likud's expense

62% of those surveyed favor of air strikes against Hamas, 23% want ground invasion, six percent call for complete restraint.

Bayit Yehudi, the most right-wing party in the Knesset, would rise from 12 seats to 18 if elections would be held now, according to a Panels poll broadcast Thursday on the Knesset Channel.

The poll was taken Wednesday, the day after the funerals of murdered teens Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-Ad Sha'er, and Eyal Yifrah, who were part of the religious Zionist community that tends to vote for Bayit Yehudi and Likud Beytenu. It found that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud Beytenu would fall from its current 31 seats to 28.

Immediate reactions to the poll on social media diagnosed the Israeli population as moving rightward. But the Center-Left bloc actually gained a seat from 59 to 60, while the Center-Right bloc fell from 61 into a tie with the Center-Left.

Labor, which has been gaining support since the election of Isaac Herzog as party chairman, would rise from 15 to 21 making Herzog the unquestioned leader of the Center-Left camp. Yesh Atid would fall from 19 seats to 13 and Meretz would double its mandates from six to 12. Hatnua would fall from six seats to three, and Kadima would win zero.

in full: http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Poll-Bayit-Yehudi-gains-at-Likuds-expense-361441