January 20, 2013 | 1:23 pm

Last Election Poll-Trend tracker: 67-53 (or maybe 66-54?)

Posted by Shmuel Rosner

Bennett Supporters next to a campaign poster; Reuters

With an election season which has shown us very little substance, and with a law that forbids new polls from being published in the last days of the campaign, we are now in the midst of political garbage time.

David Horovitz would have you believe that:

The few weeks of the campaign have highlighted fascinating trends in Israeli sentiment and affiliation, including the public’s apparent readiness to vote for fresh, unfamiliar faces, with no dependable track record. More notably, lots of Israelis — especially young Israelis — are evidently ready to vote for fresh, unfamiliar faces with very specific policies which, if implemented, would fundamentally change Israel.

That’s a refreshing outlook: Horovitz is right to focus on two parties – Naftali Bennett’s Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) and Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid (there’s a future) – as the symbol of such “readiness”. In Bennett’s party, now believed to be worthy of 12-15 mandates, there are only a handful of members with any experience in the Knesset (three, to be exact). Lapid’s party, 10-14 mandates according to the latest polls, is even less politically experienced. Lapid was ideologically opposed to have any former politician on his list (he wants to “change things” or something of the sort). So it is a list with zero parliamentary experience. Zero. A party of future Knesset UFO’s (at least until they get the hang of it).

These two parties are the likely candidates to form the backbone of Netanyahu’s next coalition, if everything goes according to plan. And with the projected number of mandates headed towards the right-religious bloc somewhat dwindling in the last polls of the season – Netanyahu would probably need to go beyond the usual suspects and reach across the nonexistent political aisle as far left as Lapid.

The most updated picture of the “bloc” situation was aggregated and calculated for us – as usual – by Prof. Camil Fuchs. It is the final update of the Poll Trend tracker prior to Election Day – the next time we get any numbers will be when the exit polls are out. So take a close look.

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