‘What if there aren't free and fair elections in Israel in October? What are we going to do?’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be even more unpopular than the current polling demonstrates, Haaretz columnist Joshua Leifer said on this week’s edition of the Haaretz Election Podcast.

“I have begun to think the polling is not telling the whole story,” he said, in a discussion on how voters who believe Netanyahu is causing irreversible damage to Israeli democracy and want him removed are currently ping-ponging between “optimism and apocalyptic thinking.”

The “apocalyptic thinking,” Leifer said, involves speculation as to whether Netanyahu, anticipating defeat, somehow uses the precarious security situation to prevent free and fair elections on the scheduled date.

"After everything we've experienced over the last four years, can we rule out that apocalyptic scenario? We can't rule it out, sadly," he said.

Haaretz correspondent Judy Maltz, who joined Leifer and host Allison Kaplan Sommer on the weekly podcast panel, said she observed much of this disquiet with the country’s leader as she travels the country to speak with voters ahead of the October 27 election, from Arab cities to upscale suburbs to West Bank settlements where the most extreme elements of the government draw their support.

In the settlement of Alon Shvut, she met people “conflicted” over whether to support Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

“On the one hand, they're very angry at Bezalel Smotrich and his party for supporting [Netanyahu’s] draft exemption bill for the ultra-Orthodox,” she said. “It really, really bothers them and angers them that the party that is supposed to represent this community voted in favor of this bill.”

At the same time, “they tell you there has been nobody in history who has done more for us in preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state than Smotrich. He’s given them more than any other minister. So they don't know whether they should or shouldn’t vote for him.”

Read more:

Haaretz's 2026 Election Poll Tracker: The Latest Projections

Analysis by Joshua Leifer: If Netanyahu Loses the Election, Will He Go Full Trump?

Who Is Gadi Eisenkot, and What Does He Stand For?

Read Judy Maltz's election dispatches from across Israel and the West Bank:

'The Jews Turned Against Us, Even the Leftists': The Bedouin City Poised to Play Kingmaker in Israel's Election

In Haifa, the 'Putin Aliyah' and Despairing Arab Citizens Warn of A Dire Future

Many of the Voters Who Could Swing Israel's Next Election Are Naftali Bennett's Neighbors

'My Party Has Been Stolen': The West Bank Settlers Drifting Away From Israel's Far Right

Why Umm al-Fahm Is Drawing Attention From Both Ends of Israel's Political Spectrum

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