Despite a drop in support over the past few weeks, the joint Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu list is projected to win 34 seats in the 22 January general elections. The two parties currently jointly hold 42 seats.
According to a new poll commissioned by the Israel Hayom newspaper, the joint list will win many more seats than any other party in the 19th Knesset or parliament.
The poll, which comes three weeks before the elections, reinforces the conventional wisdom that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his political allies will stay in power for another term.
The national-religious Habayit Hayehudi, led by naftali Bennett, which is currently polling at 14 seats, and the ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism (which are projected at 11 and five seats respectively) would allow Netanyahu to form a 64-member coalition.
The Labor party, led by Shelly Yachimovich, which won 13 seats in 2009, will get only three additional seats this time around, according to the poll.
The centrist Hatnuah ("The Movement") party, founded by former Kadima leader Tzipi Livni shortly before the elections, is projected to win 10 seats.
Yesh Atid ("There is a Future"), another centrist party led by former journalist and TV host Yair Lapid, is expected to win 11. The left-wing Meretz party is expected to have four Knesset members. The Arab parties Ra'am-Ta'al and the National Democratic Assembly are projected to win four and three seats respectively. The communist, largely Arab Hadash party is expected to win four seats.
While the center-left bloc is expected to win 56 seats, it is unlikely to pose a threat to the Right's dominance unless the ultra-Orthodox parties switch allegiances. Each camp appears to have a relatively high proportion of undecided voters who could change how the seats are distributed between like-minded parties on each side of the spectrum.
The Knesset member who has the best chance at forming a government usually gets the nod from President Shimon Peres and has several weeks to present a governing coalition that has the support of a majority of the Knesset's 120 members.