Haaretz-Dialog: Likud 35, Labor 17, Kadima 14, 65%:23% No satisfied with PM
Olmert's performance
Dr. Aaron Lerner 29 February 2008
A Haaretz-Dialog poll of 500 adult Israelis (including Israeli Arabs)
conducted Tuesday 26 February under the supervision of Professor Camil Fuchs
of Tel Aviv University
Statistical error +/- 4.5 percentage points.
If elections were held today how would you vote (expressed in mandates -
based on the 59% who said who they would vote for)
Actual Knesset today in [brackets]
35 [12] Likud
17 [19] Labor
14 [29] Kadima
12 [11] Yisrael Beteinu
09 [12] Shas
07 [06] Yahadut Hatorah
06 [05] Meretz
04 [09] Nat'l Union/NRP
03 [00] Social Justice (Gaydamak Party)
03 [07] Retirees Party
10 [10] Arab parties
Are you satisfied with the performance of the following:
President Peres: Yes 73% No 18% Don't know 9%
COS Ashkenazi: Yes 60% No 20% DK 20%
Bank of Israel Governor Fischer Yes 54% No 19% DK 27%
Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik Yes 53% No 28% DK 19%
FM Livni Yes 42% No 39% DK 19%
Supreme Court President Beinisch Yes 40% No 34% DK 26%
DM Barak Yes 40% No 46% DK 14%
AG Mazuz Yes 36% No 40% DK 24%
Justice Minister Friedmann Yes 31% No 39% DK 30%
PM Olmert Yes 23% No 65% DK 12%
Finance Minister Bar-On Yes 22% No 49% DK 29%
The Government budgeted 100 million shekel to finance the celebration
marking 60 years to Israel. Is it justified to invest the money this way or
is it better to budget it for other social needs?
For celebration 17% Other needs 79% Don't know 4%
Should direct negotiations be carried on with Haas for a cease fire deal and
the release of soldier Gilad Shalit?
Yes 63% No 28% Don';t know 9%
Was the Supreme Court justified in deciding not to cancel former president
Katzav's plea bargain?
Yes 51% No 33% Don't know 16%
This week is the birthday of former PM Sharon. Do you miss him?
Yes 55% No 38% Don't know 7%
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Israelis don't like their politicians
By Yossi Verter Haaretz Last update - 12:22 29/02/2008
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/959301.html
Roni Bar-On has been finance minister for about eight months. His
performance, and his conduct, are essential to the health of the Israeli
economy, which has never been better. Professor Stanley Fischer has been
governor of the Bank of Israel for about three years. Every few months he
raises or lowers the interest rate. His performance too is critical for the
state of the economy. But when the public is asked to express an opinion on
these two top economic officials, the contrasts are sharp: Fischer, the
professional, is held in high esteem, whereas Bar-On, the belligerent
politician, gets little credit and a lot of opposition.
The Israeli public does not like the politicians who run its life. It
prefers academics or army officers. And if there must be politicians, then
they should be old and harmless.
A Haaretz-Dialog poll conducted Tuesday under the supervision of Professor
Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University examined the public's opinions on the
country's top 11 political, military, economic and legal figures. Only four
received a satisfaction rating of more than 50 percent: President Shimon
Peres led the poll, as always, followed by Israel Defense Forces Chief of
Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, Fischer and Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik. The latter
was the most esteemed female politician, considerably ahead of Number 2,
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni - in part because she steers clear of
controversy and makes a point of calling for national unity nearly every
day.
Itzik's ranking is symbolic: She has recently been confiding to associates
that she has her eye on the position of foreign minister. Or president.
Whichever comes first. Considering the physical condition of the incumbent -
who spends a considerable amount of his time at the funerals of people who
are younger than he is - it would appear that there will be no vacancy at
the President's Residence for several years.
After the trauma of the Second Lebanon War and former chief of staff Dan
Halutz, Ashkenazi is perceived as the rehabilitator of the army. His Spartan
aura, his avoidance of interviews and his endless seriousness put him in
second place, behind Peres. Ashkenazi is the favorite of voters from all
parties, except the Arab parties.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who is also working to restore the battered
army, is not sharing the glory enjoyed by his chief of staff; he is only in
seventh place. His popularity in the polls is increasing extremely slowly,
at an average of just 2 percent a month. Barak enjoys solid support from the
centrist parties, Kadima, Labor and the Pensioners, and to some extent from
would-be voters for Arcadi Gaydamak's new party. Support for the defense
minister soared this week among Labor voters: In the poll conducted six
weeks ago, 59 percent of Labor voters expressed satisfaction with Barak,
compared to 38 percent who expressed dissatisfaction. These figures were 72
percent and 22 percent, respectively, in the latest poll.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has not recovered his popularity since the Second
Lebanon War. His support numbers are slowly climbing from poll to poll, but
they are far from ensuring his reelection. After a relatively gentle final
Winograd report, after his absolution from the accusation of "corrupt spin"
concerning the ground operation, after the attack on the nuclear
installation in Syria and the assassination of Imad Mughniyah (both of which
have been attributed to Israel) - Olmert still has no traction.
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz was unfortunate in that the survey was
conducted on the day the High Court of Justice approved the plea bargain
with former president Moshe Katsav. Perhaps that is why Mazuz's ratings do
not befit a public figure of his stature. In the age of Olmert and Justice
Minister Daniel Friedmann, the country's legal system looks like a disaster
zone. Mazuz is one of the victims. Ironically, he may also be partly
responsible for the situation.
Friedmann, an Israel Prize laureate, was brought in by Olmert to put the
Supreme Court in order, but he missed his moment. Not all of his reforms are
worthy of condemnation - some are necessary, even essential - but his
obsessive attacks on the Supreme Court and its president have sent him
tumbling to the bottom of the polls. Of the three heads of the justice
system, he earns the lowest grade.
The predecessors of Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch presumably
enjoyed greater public support, but they were not under nearly constant fire
from the justice minister. Despite these attacks, Beinisch is the only one
of the three whose supporters outnumbered her detractors in the poll. All
she needs to do is outlast Friedmann - and a look at the voting pattern
reflected in the latest poll seems to indicate that election day cannot be
far off.
The sun is setting
At the start of the week, Barak met with the leaders of Shas - Industry,
Trade and Labor Minister Eli Yishai and Communications Minister Ariel
Atias - to ask them to bring their party to heel. "We don't work for you, we
work for us," Barak told them; "I understand what you are doing but you also
have to understand us."
Journalist Yossi Elituv published parts of this conversation in the ultra-
Orthodox newspaper Mishpaha. "Don't place yourself against us, in the same
corner as [Labor MKs Shelly] Yachimovich and [Ophir] Pines-Paz," they told
him. "You made a gesture of reconciliation to the Sephardim; stay on that
path."
In recent months, Shas has been pushing laws through the Knesset as though
the plenum was about to catch fire. (This week it was the Internet
censorship law.) As a survival tactic, Olmert has been showering them with
goodies: the reestablishment of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the
appointment of dozens of rabbinical court judges, responsibility for
conversion, the Rabbinical Court law and the Internet law. Soon we will
learn about the restoration of some of the cuts made to children's
allowances, and greedy Shas is also demanding control of the Knesset Finance
Committee. (Incidentally, in the poll only 6 percent of Shas voters
expressed satisfaction with Olmert. If that's not ingratitude, what is?)
Moderates among the Haredim expressed fear this week that Shas will once
again exhaust the patience of the non-religious voters and find itself out
of the next government in favor of a party like Shinui (or perhaps Yisrael
Beiteinu), which will gain the votes of the secular and the
frustrated-immigrant.
In the meantime, it is Labor that is blinking in the spotlights and
beginning to realize that something very bad is happening. Even the biggest
cheerleader for the coalition seal, Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon, this
week sent a letter to Cabinet Secretary Oved Yehezkel, informing him that if
things continue as they are, the coalition will fall apart.
At the meeting of Labor MKs early this week, Yachimovich said: "The sun is
setting. We are in an election campaign, Shas is on its way out and we have
to act accordingly."
Barak agreed with her: "Yes," he said, "the elections may be closer than we
thought. We must come together on the issues that are important to us and
our voters, above all the rule of law and matters of religion and state."
Afraid no more
Survey after survey, month after month, Likud has continued to claw its way
upward in the polls, and now it is approaching the number of Knesset seats
that Ariel Sharon achieved in the 2003 elections - 38. Party chair MK
Benjamin Netanyahu would happily agree to getting 28 seats today - for real,
not in a public opinion poll. Since the Second Lebanon War, the poll picture
has been fairly static: Likud with around 30 seats, the rightist bloc
obtaining a clear victory with a 70-MK coalition, and a center-left
government headed by Labor or Kadima looking like science fiction. It is
hard to see this map changing substantially in a four-month election
campaign.
The new Likud, which polled the equivalent of 35 seats in the latest survey,
is more moderate, more dignified and more restrained. This is not the Likud
currently represented in the Knesset by 12 MKs who are the nationalist hard
core. This can be seen in the respondents' attitude toward Beinisch: 49
percent support her, 31 percent oppose her. It is the clearest sign that
Likud is once again a center-right party, as in Sharon's day. To this can be
added the finding, published in Haaretz on Wednesday, that 48 percent of
Likud voters support direct talks with Hamas on a truce and the release of
Gilad Shalit. Netanyahu, an obsessive consumer of public opinion polls, is
without a doubt aware of this. It is not by chance that he is talking up "an
economic peace" and focusing on the issue of Jerusalem.
A note of caution: 41 percent of respondents declined to say how they would
vote (The remaining responses were calculated in accordance with accepted
survey methods). In fact, 48 of the 120 Knesset seats are unidentified,
falling under the rubrics of "don't know" or "refuses to answer." This is a
very high percentage of undecided voters.
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