A poll published Thursday by Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site found that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar would each get 23 seats if elections were held now, with the deadlock persisting between the blocs led by the two frontrunners.

Neither candidate was seen as being able to muster a 61-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset, in the survey from Zman Yisrael.

It was the first poll by Zman since registration for party slates ended on Tuesday. A Zman poll last week gave each of the parties 22 seats.

After the ruling Likud and challenger Yashar came former prime minister Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad party with 15 seats, a position unchanged over the past three weeks.

Next came the hawkish Yisrael Beytenu (10), the ultra-Orthodox Shas (10), fellow ultra-Orthodox party United Torah Judaism (9), and left-wing The Democrats (8).

The Joint List, a coalition of Arab-majority parties, got 7 seats. Far-right Otzma Yehudit scored 6 seats, followed by Arab-majority party Ra’am with 5.

Bringing up the rear was far-right Religious Zionism with 4 seats.

The new right-wing People of Israel party, whose leader, Ofer Winter, has said he would back Netanyahu, did not pass the election threshold of 3.25 percent of the vote, equal to four seats. That was in contrast with other........

© The Times of Israel