Internal poll: Shaked leads over Kahane - but the masses have abandoned

June 28, 2022   

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has not yet announced his political future, but an internal survey conducted by the Yamina party among the national religious public - and published on Channel 7 - indicates that the preferred candidate to lead the party after Bennett is Minister Ayelet Shaked.

The survey participants were asked about a situation in which Bennett decides to take a break from politics, and had to say whether they would prefer Minister Ayelet Shaked or Deputy Minister Matan Kahane to lead the party in his place. 30.1% of the respondents replied that they preferred Shaked to lead Yamina, and only 13.2% supported Matan Kahane. This could have been a very encouraging figure for Shaked, except that the number of respondents on the third option: about 57% of the participants answered the question that they do not intend to vote for the Yamina party at all and have no interest in the question of who will lead it. In recent days, Shaked and Kahane met with Bennett together and separately to discuss the future of the party. Both want to lead it if Bennett resigns. Sources in Yamina claimed that if Bennett decides that Shaked will run to lead Yamina, Matan Kahane will not run on this list and it is possible that MK Abir Kara will not continue on it either.