There is a voter I keep meeting. He did his army service, or his son did, or both. He votes Right and always has. He believes Torah and the rifle belong together, the way the hesder yeshivot (programs that braid Talmud study with combat service) have insisted for two generations. And he has no party that he feels represents his values and ideals.
He will not vote Likud because the party he trusted spent this Knesset shielding haredi (ultra-Orthodox) draft evasion to keep its coalition alive. He will not vote for Bezalel Smotrich, who built his career on the national-religious service ethos and then let his party advance a Torah-study Basic Law that dresses up the same exemption. And he will not follow Naftali Bennett into Beyachad (“Together”), because Bennett owns the draft issue but sold it in a package with Yair Lapid, and that price is too high.
Too Right for the opposition, too betrayed for the coalition, too principled for the far Right. Call him the “homeless Right.” The data says there are at least six seats for him, and that he, not the slogans, decides the next election.
The numbers are not soft. A Channel 12 poll this spring found that 42% of Likud’s 2022 voters are no longer firmly committed to the party, and only 58% say they will definitely vote for it again. The instinct is to assume that they drift rightward, toward Smotrich or Itamar Ben-Gvir. They do not. Just 4% say they would move further Right. The exit is real, and it does not lead where the coalition assumes.
