Good news for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is performing well in the all important Israellycool poll on his performance on YouTube’s WorldView. As of the time of this post, 53% say he did exceedingly well, and another 42% say his performance was good enough.
Unfortunately for the Prime Minister, that is not going to guarantee he stays in office. Especially if the next poll results are any indication.
A significant majority of the Jewish Israeli public is dissatisfied with the performance of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, according to a Smith Research poll sponsored by The Jerusalem Post to coincide with Thursday’s second anniversary of the government’s formation.
The poll of 500 adult Jewish Israelis representing a statistical sample of the population was taken Monday and Tuesday and had a margin of error of 4.5 percent.
It found that 30% of Israeli Jews considered the prime minister’s performance poor and 27% very poor. By contrast, only 11% said Netanyahu had performed very well, and 32% said well.
About half the voters on the Right were satisfied, compared to only 21% of respondents on the Left.
Likud supporters were overwhelmingly satisfied with Netanyahu, with 82% giving him a positive review, while only 17% of Kadima backers said they were satisfied. A similar poll a year ago found that only 68% of Likud supporters were satisfied with Netanyahu then, compared to 22% of Kadima backers.
Voters describing themselves as haredi, religious or traditional were more likely to be satisfied than secular respondents to the poll – 50%- 56% compared to 33%, respectively.
Among Arab respondents, most blamed Netanyahu. While right-wing respondents were more likely to blame Abbas than Netanyahu for the stalemate – 34% versus 12% – among leftwingers, 26% blamed Netanyahu and just 4% Abbas.
Forty percent of left-wing respondents and only 11% of right-wingers blamed both.
Most likely to blame Obama for the lack of progress were supporters of haredi parties. Of these, 19% held Obama solely responsible and 35% partially responsible, compared to Kadima supporters, among whom only 2% blamed Obama exclusively and 17% partially.The poll also found that a significant number of Jewish Israelis held Netanyahu at least partially responsible for the lack of progress in diplomatic negotiations with the Palestinians.
Asked whom they blamed for the diplomatic stalemate, 18% said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, 12% said Netanyahu, and 25% said both equally. Six percent said they blamed US President Barack Obama, 10% blamed Obama and Abbas, and 5% Netanyahu and Obama. The remaining 24% did not express and opinion.
At least Netanyahu can take heart in the fact he has a famous fan.
