Immigrants from the former Soviet Union may end up confounding the pundits who predicted they would vote overwhelmingly for Likud or parties further to the right in reaction to their lives under communism.
Two recent polls have indicated that the Labor Party, headed by Yitzhak Rabin, may benefit most from the influx of olim from Russia and the other republics that formerly constituted the Soviet Union.
A poll taken by Dr. Aharon Fein of the Tatzpit Institute for the Russian-language newspaper Vremya indicates that 43 percent of the immigrants would vote for Labor in the June 23 elections, compared to 14 percent for Likud.
The results, published Friday in the Israeli daily Ma’ariv, which owns Vremya, showed that 52 percent of the former Soviet immigrants want Rabin to be the next prime minister, against 22 percent who would prefer Yitzhak Shamir.
The second poll was ordered by the right-wing Tsomet party, which never made the results public.
But according to Ma’ariv, which says it obtained the data, the survey found that the left, including Labor and the newly formed Meretz bloc, would capture 42.5 percent of the vote, compared to 12.7 percent for the right-wing bloc, consisting of the Likud, Tsomet, Tehiya and Moledet parties.
The poll, conducted by Dr. Rachel Yisraeli of the Geocartographia Institute, gave Rabin a 41.9 to 14.1 percent-edge over Shamir for the office of prime minister.
Ma’ariv said Tsomet withheld the poll results because they showed it would receive the fewest votes of all the parties on the right.
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