Sa'ar enjoys exceptional media support and offers the government a partnership with the government, but for Netanyahu the primaries are unnecessary.

• Likud Center members, primaries are going to be the big story of the election // Photo Archive: Gideon Markovich

The road to the general election goes through the primaries in the Likud. The "Israel Today" poll and a brain database released on Friday put the intra-school arena into a prediction that seems to have been absent for years. The poll - which showed that Gideon Sa'ar brings the same mandates Netanyahu brings to the Likud - soon became Sa'ar's campaign, in an attempt to undermine the widespread premise that Netanyahu is the Likud's most important electoral asset.

Likely, the Likud-led primaries will soon be the big political story of the 2020 election campaign (Round One?). Not only Likud members are involved in this story, and other parties in the political system are beginning to stir in this arena, trying to influence the party's functionaries to choose the right candidate, the one that challenges Netanyahu. Because Benny Gantz also knows that the road to the premiership, to a rotation agreement, probably even first - is going through a victory victory.

Gideon Sa'ar: Netanyahu will not succeed in forming government in elections too // Photo: Newsenders

Oddly enough, Sa'ar does not deny that Gantz has a vested interest in his victory and bases his central message of his campaign on the fact that, unlike Netanyahu, he can form a government, according to Gantz and White Blue. It is unclear how much Likudians love the fact that who dictates their moves are the political opponents.

Sa'ar enjoys exceptional media support, especially from journalists and media outlets who are not known as Likud Party enthusiasts. The functionaries are aware of this. But Sa'ar offers them something that Netanyahu has trouble: a partnership in power.

For Netanyahu, the primaries are superfluous, and despite his expected victory, he does not intend to leave anything to chance. If Feiglin got 30 percent when he faced him, no doubt Storm could get more, but the numbers have meaning. 40 percent of support is no longer a matter of that. Netanyahu will do everything to prevent a storm from reaching such proportions.

The Likud-led primaries are just getting started for Netanyahu. The survey, like other similar surveys, is much more than a wake-up call, more like a slap in the face. If he does not wake up, the right will lose.

Netanyahu needs to reinvent himself. In the past he managed to do this, but it simply wouldn't be. After more than ten consecutive years, the public already knows it, for its virtues and shortcomings, and the ability of campaigners, however talented, to take such an old and familiar product and innovate with it, reach new audiences and inspire the old - is an unbearable task, though possible.