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Some 48% of Israelis would prefer Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot as prime minister, compared with 40% for incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu if Knesset elections were held now, according to a poll published Friday by the Israeli daily Maariv.
The survey, conducted by Lazar Research and Panel4All on Sept. 16-17 among 4,089 respondents with 600 actual responses, had a maximum margin of error of 4 percentage points.
It showed Eisenkot's lead over Netanyahu narrowing from 12 points to 8 points compared with the previous survey.
Former prime minister Naftali Bennett also led Netanyahu, 44% to 41%, while Netanyahu held an advantage over Avigdor Lieberman, 42% to 38%.
According to the Maariv poll, Netanyahu's governing coalition would win 50 seats if elections were held now, compared with 54 for the opposition bloc, with Arab parties taking 12 seats and the Reservists-Economic party four, completing the Knesset's 120 seats.
Eisenkot's Yashar party remained the largest single party with 23 seats, ahead of Netanyahu's Likud at 18. Bennett's Together party placed third with 13 seats, unchanged from the prior poll.
The Democrats, led by Yair Golan, and Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu each received nine seats. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir's Jewish Power party was projected to win eight seats, while the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism and Shas parties each received seven.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's Religious Zionism party was projected to win six seats, and the Reservists-Economic party, led by Yoaz Hendel and Yaron Zelekha, and Ofer Winter's Your People Israel party each received four.
Among Arab parties, the Joint Arab List won seven seats and Mansour Abbas's United Arab List five.
The Maariv poll's Hebrew-language coverage noted that Likud's continued decline to 18 seats came even as the governing coalition held steady at 50 seats overall, aided by the Reservists-Economic party clearing the electoral threshold at 3.5% and Your People Israel strengthening to six seats.
The same coverage noted the Reservists-Economic party's 3.5% and Your People Israel's 3.4% support were both close to the 3.25% threshold required to enter parliament.
A separate poll by Channel 13, conducted Tuesday in cooperation with Index, Stat-Net, Sample and Askaria among 886 respondents with a 3.3% margin of error, showed Eisenkot leading Netanyahu by a narrower 45% to 36% on the question of who is better suited to be prime minister, a nine-point gap.
That survey showed a different seat distribution, with Netanyahu's bloc actually leading the opposition, 54 seats to 52, with Arab parties taking 14, a reversal from recent polling trends that had generally shown the opposition ahead.
In the Channel 13 poll, Likud received 18 seats; the alliance between Smotrich's Religious Zionism and Moshe Feiglin's Zehut parties took eight; Ben-Gvir's Otzma Yehudit received eight; and Shas and United Torah Judaism each won seven, with the Amcha Yisrael party at six.
On the opposition side, Yashar won 22 seats, Bennett's Together party 12, Golan's Democrats 10, and Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu eight; the Joint List received eight seats and Abbas's Ra'am six.
Channel 13 pollster Shmuel Rosner noted in accompanying analysis that polls taken roughly 40 days before Israel's past two elections had proven fairly predictive, though Likud and the broader Netanyahu bloc had each tended to slightly underperform their final poll numbers by roughly one to two seats.
Neither poll's leading bloc would reach the 61-seat threshold needed to form a government without support from Arab parties, whose leaders across the opposition have rejected relying on them to do so.
A total of 38 party lists have registered to contest the Oct. 27 election, with the Maariv poll projecting 13 would clear the electoral threshold.
The competing polls come amid reported tension between Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir over the shape of a future governing coalition.
Israel's Channel 12 reported that Netanyahu spoke with Ben-Gvir and Likud lawmaker Tally Gotliv and assured them Otzma Yehudit would be part of his next government, a claim Ben-Gvir's party denied, saying no such conversation had taken place.
Ben-Gvir's party instead claimed Netanyahu had told several figures that Otzma Yehudit would not be included in his next government and that he preferred Eisenkot as a coalition partner.
Ben-Gvir later criticized Netanyahu publicly, saying his party had shown greater loyalty to him than some Likud members, and objected to what he described as efforts to replace him with Eisenkot.
Netanyahu has headed the current government since late December 2022.
He is on trial on corruption charges that could carry a prison sentence if he is convicted, and is separately the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with Israel's military campaign in Gaza.
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