In the past as Israeli elections approached, television news programs would begin with the anchors promising to share new poll results during the broadcast. The audience would anxiously wait for the predictions, generally until the latter half of the broadcast. Viewers had no choice but to sit through all sorts of other, usually less interesting stories. The hearts of politicians would skip a beat during each sampling, and viewers could feel tensions rising as election day approached. This campaign season, however, with elections for the 22nd Knesset rapidly approaching, it is hard to find anything more boring than the polls.

Survey results these days are consistently similar, even when compared to those from weeks and months earlier. The right and center-left blocs each poll at 54 to 56 seats, and Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beitenu polls at 10 seats. It seems highly unlikely that any of the major parties will fail to pass the electoral threshold. If anything is happening, it is taking place within the blocs.

The Blue and White’s promise to attract votes from the right, and Labor leader Amir Peretz’s assurances that Labor-Gesher can win support from the periphery have yet to be realized. The same dynamic holds on the right, where none of the parties has managed to draw siphon from the other bloc. This includes the religious Yamina (Rightward), which had selected the secularist Ayelet Shaked as its leader in the hope that it would win votes from secular Jews who respect tradition.

While the media is pouring enormous resources into trying to generate interest in the election, it appears to be in vain. To date, the most newsworthy stories seem to be the decision by the Labor-Gesher chair to shave his trademark mustache and the bizarre phone calls made by the wife of Minister Rafi Peretz slandering Yamina's Naftali Bennett, who was forced to relinquish his brief tenure as leader of the religious right. What could break the standoff between the blocs is voter turnout.