The first polls released after Benny Gantz’s speech this week showed his party charging forward.

Surveys for Israel’s main broadcasters on Wednesday night projected Benny Gantz’s party would take between 21 and 24 Knesset seats, leapfrogging the centrist Yesh Atid.

The polls gave Avi Gabbay’s Labour and the New Right party formed by Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked seat tallies in single digits, while Tzipi Livni’s centrist Hatnuah would not win enough votes to cross the 3.25 per cent electoral threshold.

Channel 11: Likud 31 Gantz 23
Channel 12: Likud 30 Gantz 21
Channel 13: Likud 30 Gantz 24

— Anshel Pfeffer (@AnshelPfeffer) January 30, 2019

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud still leads all polls and was this week hovering between 29 and 31 seats, around the number it won in 2015.

But another survey, for the Israeli news site Walla! by Panel Politics, suggested for the first time that right-wing and religious parties may not take enough seats to provide the Israeli Prime Minister with a workable majority, a scenario that could drive him to centrist parties for support.

There is still time for the smaller factions to create alliances: Israeli parties have a fortnight to file their lists of candidates with the country’s electoral board.