Shift to the nationalist-religious camp
Shift to the nationalist-religious campIsrael News Photo: (illustrative)

Polls show a slow but steady move to the nationalist and religious camp at the expense of the Likud, which is projected to lead the next government. Support continues to lag for Kadima and Labor.

The highly respected Ma'agar Mohot (Brain Base) survey also shows that the public is equally divided in its opinion on whether the next Defense Minister should be Ehud Barak, Shaul Mofaz or Moshe Ya'alon, who is running on the Likud ticket. All three are former IDF Chiefs of Staff.

Following are the results of the poll, listed in the first column, compared with last week's survey in the second column. The current number of Knesset seats for each party is listed in brackets in the third column.

Likud coalition: 66
31 29   [12] Likud
13 12   [11] Yisrael Beiteinu           
12 12   [12] Shas
05 04   [09] "Jewish Home"
05 06   [06] Yehadut HaTorah

Kadima coalition: 42
25 25   [29] Kadima
11 10   [19] Labor
06 08   [05] Meretz

The Pensioners party will return to the Knesset with two seats, according to the poll, while support for the Green party has dropped to the point that it would not win the minimum number of votes needed for representation in the Knesset. The Pensioners party could join whichever coalition is formed.

The Arab parties (Ra'am-Ta'al, Hadash and Balad) would win nine seats, with Hadash in the lead with four mandates.  

A similar shift to the nationalist camp is shown in a Haaretz-Dialog poll, which shows that the Likud had lost six mandates to the nationalist and religious parties.