Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enjoys a bigger party-wide support than his rival, Gideon Sa’ar, but the PM’s campaign is worried about low voter turnout because of the inclement weather, as the battle for the Likud leadership is reaching the finish line on Thursday.
Starting at 9 AM, party members will be able to vote at 106 locations across the country. 116,048 Likud members were invited to come out and vote for a new chairman for the first time since 2014.
Last night, in the midst of a Netanyahu campaign stop in Ashkelon, a rocket was fired on the city. The prime minister was escorted off the stage and later returned. This is the second time the Gazans fired on a Netanyahu campaign stop, the previous time was in Ashdod. Some in Israel have even suggested the Islamic Jihad is on the PM’s mailing list and receive early warnings whenever he’s close by. The IDF retaliated.
Thursday’s voting will end at 11 PM, and final results will be released Friday morning.
Both sides are tense in anticipation of the stormy weather expected Thursday. In Israel, the land of poor drainage, even a little rain often causes traffic jams and no one knows which of the two contestants has a larger core of supporters who would show up to vote despite the hard rain.
Sources at Sa’ar’s headquarters say any outcome would be an achievement, inevitably marking Netanyahu’s successor. This may not necessarily be the case, and should he not win today, Sa’ar is sure to meet a formidable challenge from the likes of UN Ambassador Danny Danon, Foreign Minister Yisral Katz, Culture and Sports minister Miri Regev, and Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein.
Netanyahu’s campaign focuses on his long service to the country. He has urged voters to trust him, but when asked on Wednesday about the issue of immunity from prosecution, he refused to reply.
Sa’ar’s main point is that only he can get the Likud out of the political impasse and form a government – which Netanyahu has failed to achieve in two consecutive elections.
Netanyahu referred to Sa’ar’s argument in a recent interview on Army radio: “First of all, I saw that Gantz has not succeeded either. But this tie is about to be broken, and I see exactly why. I see it in all our polls.”
The last turbulent two weeks in the battle between the two candidates for the throne has made the Likud party come alive. The energy is back, the color returned to the cheeks of activists in both camps. The Likud analysis indicates that in the last two elections they lost 3-4 seats in Likud strongholds that were complacent and did not show up to vote. The resurgence that follows the primaries could be dramatic, with its effects seen on March 2, Election Day.
Netanyahu has changed his campaigning style completely. After two election campaigns in which he indulged in going over the head of the media through live Facebook broadcasts that many of his lower-income voters don’t care for, Netanyahu has returned to the field, holding three campaign stops a day, and in the last few days even six a day. They call it Bibi Tour.
Gideon Sa’ar has been working on this primary for the past 20 years. Even when he was out of politics, he continued to attend every wedding and bar mitzvah of Likud activists. He knows their names, and knows personally all the deputy branch managers. The fact is that Sa’ar has been able to garner such deep support throughout the Likud, that when he threw his glove in the ring against Netanyahu, he was not rejected by the party which everyone had believed was under the complete control of the prime minister.
Here is one example of the undercurrents in Likud which Netanyahu may not be awae of: the Sa’ar headquarters this week complained that the Election Commission deliberately hurt their voters in south Tel Aviv, placing no ballots there, so that Sa’ar supporters would have to travel to vote in the north of the city, half an hour each way by bus. South Tel Aviv is a bastion of city dwellers who oppose Netanyahu’s relatively liberal policies towards the illegal workers from Africa who flood the neighborhoods there.
These Likudniks will not vote for Bibi.