A new right-wing party led by former Likud ministers Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein would win five Knesset seats if elections were held today, but would eliminate two similar parties and fail to end the electoral stalemate, according to a poll from The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister site Zman Yisrael.

The poll, published Thursday, saw 55 of the Knesset’s 120 seats going to Zionist parties opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 49 to Netanyahu’s Likud and its allies, and 11 to Arab-majority parties, whom some anti-Netanyahu party leaders reject as governing partners.

The survey predicts that neither Netanyahu’s bloc nor the Zionist opposition would secure a majority of 61 seats even if joined by the so-called “Likud B” party that Erdan and Edelstein are reportedly mulling as a more statesmanlike alternative to the legacy party, ahead of the October 27 election.

Former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar party continued its run atop the poll with 23 seats, down two from its all-time high of 25 in last week’s poll.

Yashar was followed in the Zionist opposition by right-wing former prime minister Naftali Bennett’s Together party, with 14 seats, up one from last week; former defense minister Avigdor Liberman’s hawkish secularist party Yisrael Beytenu, with 10 seats, the same as last week; and former IDF deputy chief Yair Golan’s left-leaning Democrats party, with eight seats, down two from last week.

On Netanyahu’s side, the premier’s own Likud received 20 seats in the poll. Eight seats each went to the Likud’s two ultra-Orthodox allies — the Sephardic Shas, which lost one........

© The Times of Israel