There is a lot of optimism in the religious Zionist party, but quite a bit of concern began to nest yesterday, that the success in the polls was too early and might cause voters to flee.
Until now, it seemed that Netanyahu was unable to overcome the rise of the power of religious Zionism, and the message about "the importance of the greatest party" was not accepted by the public.
But since yesterday the feeling is that there is a turn, according to which the Likud will eventually rise - at the expense of religious Zionism, which may fall from the 15 mandates it received in the last polls.
A separate campaign from Ben Gvir.
Smotrich, photo: Yossi Zeliger
Fear of unity
The party's chairman, Bezalel Smotrich, and Otzma Yehudit chairman, Itamar Ben Gabir, spent the last day separately.
The strategic decision of the two was to run a completely separate campaign, and to appear together in public only on rare occasions.
Even the moments of decision and the presentation of the television models will probably be conducted separately by Smotrich and Ben Gvir: each party has taken a different headquarters where they will celebrate the election results with their activists.
Religious Zionism will be at Airport City, while Otzma Yehudit will be at the Wart Hotel in Jerusalem.
At the top of the party, they began to fear that even if the right-wing bloc receives 61 mandates, Netanyahu may in the end not include them in the coalition under his leadership, but instead offer a partnership to Benny Gantz or Yair Lapid.
It is estimated that after the elections, an international delegitimization campaign will begin against the government with Smotrich and Ben Gvir, and put pressure on Netanyahu to prefer a government with leftist elements.
Netanyahu intends to "shave" mandates from him.
Ben Gabir, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
The message that the two will try to convey in the remaining day is that it does not matter if the Likud receives 30 seats or 25, and that what is important is to ensure the formation of a right-wing government that will prevent the Likud from offering a partnership to the center-left parties.
While Netanyahu is calling for a vote for Likud in order for it to be a bigger party than Lapid, they are calling for religious Zionism to vote for them so that their party will be bigger than Benny Gantz's state camp party.
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