A poll published by the Kan public broadcaster on Sunday gives the anti Netanyahu bloc 56 seats and the pro Netanyahu bloc 53, with the Arab parties holding 11. Sixty one are needed to govern. The arithmetic is the same as it has been for months, and the election is about eleven weeks away.
Party by party: Likud 24, Yashar 23, B'Yachad 13, the Democrats 10, Yisrael Beytenu 10, Otzma Yehudit 8, Shas 8, United Torah Judaism 8, Ra'am 6, Religious Zionism 5 and Hadash Ta'al 5. Balad falls below the threshold, as does Blue and White.
The finding with the shortest shelf life is about the new parties. Two right wing lists were formed to break exactly this deadlock, one around Tropper and Hendel and one around Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein, the latter founded only last week. Neither clears the threshold in this poll. A new party polling at zero seats a week after launch is not yet a verdict, but it does mean the thing built to change the arithmetic has not changed it.
The eleven Arab seats are the number both blocs keep at arm's length and neither can ignore. Fifty six plus eleven is a majority on paper, and the reason nobody describes it as one is a political convention rather than a mathematical fact. Until that convention shifts or one bloc gains five seats from somewhere, every poll like this describes the same stalemate in slightly different words.