Most Israelis have already made up their minds for the Oct. 27 election. The ones who have not are clustered almost entirely in one place: the political center.
That is the headline finding of the Jewish People Policy Institute’s Israeli Society Index, a monthly tracking poll from JPPI, an independent Israeli think tank whose survey work is compiled by researchers Shmuel Rosner and Noah Slepkov. A second figure buried deeper in the same release may matter more. Seven in ten voters who name the judicial system as their top concern want a right-leaning government, a sign that the court fight Israel shelved in 2023 never actually went away.
Eighty-Two Percent of Voters Already Have an Answer
Combine the two most decisive categories and 82% of Israelis say they already know how they will vote, 53% completely certain and another 29% fairly certain. Fourteen percent are still waiting for the field to take shape, and 4% do not plan to vote at all.
Certainty is not spread evenly. On the Left, 71% call themselves completely certain. On the Right, it is 58%. In the center, that figure drops to 44%, and 22% of center-right voters say they are still waiting to see which parties even run.
Prof. Yedidia Stern, president of JPPI, said that most Israelis are entering the campaign with established preferences, and therefore the political battle will focus on the votes of those in the centrist bloc. The date itself carries weight: Israel’s coalition confirmed the vote for Oct. 27, and if the government holds until then, it becomes the first Knesset since 1988 to serve a complete four-year term.
The Right Keeps Growing While ‘Left’ Nearly Vanishes
Self-identification has kept drifting rightward among Jewish Israelis over the past year. Two-thirds now place themselves in one of four right-leaning categories, up from 63% a year ago, while the share calling themselves exactly centrist has grown too.
| Political Camp (Jewish Israelis) | July 2025 | July 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Right (four right-leaning categories) | 63% | 66% |
| Exactly in the center | 10% | 13% |
| Left bloc (center-left through far left) | 22% | 19% |
The institute’s July index notes something sharper hiding inside that shrinking left bloc: the categories Left and far Left are almost empty, just 3% and roughly zero. Nearly everyone still counting themselves on the left actually sits in the center-left, which helps explain why the center is so hard to read. It is not one bloc. It is several groups with different reasons for not committing.
Security Wins Nationally, Loses in the Center
Asked what will decide their vote, 28% of all respondents picked security first, ahead of relations between government and the judiciary at 18%, advancing a more liberal Israel at 15%, and reducing internal division at 13%. About a quarter chose something else entirely.
Break the numbers down by camp and the national picture stops holding.
- Right-wing voters: security first at 40%, government-judiciary relations second at 30%
- Center, center-left and left voters: advancing a more liberal Israel, picked first by 35% to 38% across those cohorts
- Arab respondents: security first at 34%, the economy second at 26%
- Jewish respondents overall: the economy barely registers, chosen first by just 5%
Security dominates the headline number, then splits into entirely different meanings depending on who is answering. It has also become a harder sell abroad even as it anchors the vote at home. American backing for the war has been sliding, a separate poll found, a gap between domestic and international opinion that Israeli campaigns rarely have to manage at the same time.
The Judicial Fight Simmered Through the War
Weekly protests against the government’s judicial overhaul ran from January 7 to October 12, 2023, nine months that became the largest sustained protest movement in Israel’s history. The Knesset passed one piece of that legislation, stripping the Supreme Court’s power to strike down government decisions as unreasonable, in July 2023. The court itself struck the law down in January 2024. The protests stopped only because the Gaza war began and a wartime unity cabinet formed.
Nearly three years later, the fight has not disappeared. It has just gone quiet inside a bigger crisis.
Israeli society continues to engage with fundamental questions concerning the state and its character, and not only with security.
Stern said that in the report accompanying the poll. He added that the judicial system remains a central component of the Right’s political identity even after nearly three years in which the war dominated public life. A similar pattern showed up earlier this year in the institute’s February index, where judicial reform ranked as the single central issue for 49% of right-wing adherents heading into the campaign, ahead of every other option offered.
Which Single Issue Best Predicts the Right-Wing Vote?
Voters who name the judiciary as their top concern overwhelmingly want a right-leaning government. Seventy percent of that group backs a right-wing coalition, split almost evenly between keeping things as they are and adding a centrist partner.
- 70% of voters who rank the judicial system as their top issue want a right-leaning coalition
- 41% of that group wants the current coalition kept intact
- 29% would keep the Right in charge but add a centrist party to the mix
JPPI said the finding shows the judicial system is set to stay a central election issue and a unifying cause for right-wing voters specifically, more than security itself manages to be. A related dynamic showed up in the institute’s April index, which found election priorities splitting cleanly along the same fault line: the center-left wants to replace the government, the right wants judicial reform. The government’s parallel push to rebuild Gaza-adjacent outposts torn down in 2005 has kept the settler wing engaged too, giving right-wing voters more than one reason to stay put in October.
Arab Voters Are Consolidating Behind the Left
Among Arab respondents, half placed themselves on the Left this year, up from 47% in 2025. The more notable shift is elsewhere: the share who said they could not place themselves anywhere on the political spectrum fell from 21% to 15%.
JPPI said that decline could point to increasing political organization ahead of the election. Fewer undecided respondents combined with a firming leftward identification suggests Arab voters may arrive at the ballot box more unified than in past cycles, even as Jewish Israeli identity keeps sliding the other way.
Stern Wants a Coalition Broad Enough to Hold
Stern pointed to earlier institute surveys showing that Israelis view internal division as one of the country’s biggest threats, on par with external ones. His response was not another campaign talking point. He called for the broadest possible coalition after the election, one built to set agreed-upon rules for managing political disputes.
JPPI is drafting what it calls a thin constitution with a team of experts drawn from across Israeli society, meant to give future governments a shared rulebook regardless of who wins. Whether any winning coalition adopts it is a separate question from whether one gets built at all.
Election day is set. Oct. 27, 2026, will be the first time since 1988 that an Israeli government has lasted a full term to reach it.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is Israel’s next election, and why is the date significant?
Israel’s coalition confirmed the vote for Oct. 27, 2026, the last date allowed under the country’s four-year Knesset calendar. If the government holds until then, it will be the first Knesset since 1988 to serve a complete term, a rare outcome in a system built around early elections.
How many Knesset seats does it take to form a government?
A coalition needs 61 of the Knesset’s 120 seats for a majority. That threshold is what makes small centrist and Arab-majority parties potential kingmakers even when they poll in single digits nationally.
Why do so few Jewish Israelis call themselves ‘Left,’ while half of Arab respondents do?
Among Jewish respondents, only 3% chose the label Left and almost none picked far Left, meaning most of the Jewish left bloc actually sits in the center-left. Among Arab respondents the picture runs the other way: half placed themselves on the Left this year, up from 47% in 2025, a distinct pattern from the Jewish electorate’s rightward drift.
How was the JPPI Israeli Society Index conducted?
The July 2026 survey questioned 772 people between July 1 and July 5, split between 568 Jewish-sector respondents reached through theMadad.com and 204 Arab-sector respondents reached through Afkar Research, then weighted the results by voting pattern and religious observance.
What ended Israel’s 2023 judicial overhaul protests?
Weekly demonstrations ran from January 7 to October 12, 2023, the country’s largest sustained protest movement in decades. They stopped only when the Gaza war began and a wartime unity cabinet formed. The one reform law the Knesset had passed, stripping the Supreme Court’s power to void government decisions as unreasonable, was itself struck down by the court in January 2024.
