On Israel's left, Herzog is Livni's real electoral challenge

The swift collapse in the percentage of respondents who supported Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as their top candidate for the premiership in the latest opinion polls (Dec. 8-9) is a formative event in the 2015 elections. This is the first time in recent years that Netanyahu, the undisputed king of opinion polls as the most appropriate person to direct the state, is losing this advantage.

Ostensibly, this would seem to be wonderful news for the center-left bloc whose representative, Labor Chairman Isaac Herzog, is closing the gap vis-a-vis Netanyahu in the polls. According to a survey taken by Israeli TV Channel 10 News that was released on Dec. 9, support for Netanyahu as premier drops to only 23%, while Herzog leaps to 22%. This is a dramatic, close race and even though the duel is taking place only in the opinion polls, it has a tremendous effect on public opinion. On the conscious level, these results break Netanyahu's hegemony and, more so, in favor of a left-wing leader.

Herzog has metamorphosed from a rather flavorless politician to a man who may be the State of Israel’s next prime minister. This is indeed the outcome of the anti-Bibi [Netanyahu] trend that has taken over Israeli politics, but it is also due to the speedy unification agreement between Herzog and former Justice Minister Tzipi Livni.

Israelis are greatly affected by political unions of this type that radiate hope-generating momentum and renewal. In the current case, this unity deal includes also a novelty: a rotation agreement between Herzog and Livni for the role of prime minister. But when we analyze the result of Channel 10’s survey with regard to segmentation of the seats between the parties and between the blocs, a less inspiring, even quite problematic picture emerges for the center-left bloc. Not only does the Herzog-Livni alliance not serve to retain the bloc’s political strength, it even generates the projected loss of 10 seats.