Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his campaign team Wednesday night for a focused discussion on the smaller right-wing parties—including Noam, Zehut, and Ofer Winter’s party. The goal of the meeting was clear: figure out how to ensure these parties don’t waste votes for the right-wing bloc.
1+The central message that emerged is that the right cannot afford a situation where so many party fragments are running, and that a way must be found to unite the whole affair. Netanyahu is targeting a specific number: four parties in the bloc. The rationale is simple—with four parties, surplus vote agreements can be arranged among all of them. If there are five, one party will be left without an agreement. And a scenario of six parties isn’t even being considered, because it would mean at least one would certainly fail to cross the electoral threshold.
1+Meanwhile, there’s an interesting development regarding the prime minister’s reserved slots. Yosef Haddad’s name has been gaining strength in recent weeks, and he’s currently emerging as the nearly certain reserved candidate for Prime Minister Netanyahu.