Yair Lapid From Zero to Hero

Yair Lapid, who once was one of Israel’s many “small-business” politicians, is now a major player in Israel’s political talk.
Lapid, who has now become a big name in Israeli politics has always scored very poorly in Israeli election polls, even those held by left-wing newspapers and institutes. Here is an example…
In this 3-month old Haaretz poll (check the photo below), voters showed that they would give Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party only 7 seats, which would have given the party just tiny power in the Knesset (maybe not as tiny as Kadima who is now the smallest party in the Knesset, after it was the largest when Tzipi Livni lead it).

Today, as usual, the table has turned around in Israeli politics. Benjamin Netanyahu’s worse nightmare is finally not Tzipi Livni, but rather Yair Lapid, who is now Israel’s next potential Prime Minister if elections were to re-run today, according to the brand new poll conducted by the leading Israeli research institute Maagar Mochot and published on major Israeli newspapers, like Maariv, Haaretz and Time of Israel.
If you are feeling curious to know how other Israeli parties did in that recent poll, let me show you around a few numbers:

• Likud–Beiteinu: 28 seats (currently has 31 seats in Knesset)
• Yesh Atid Party: 24 seats (currently has 19 seats)
• Labor Party (Haavodah): 11 seats (currently has 15 seats)
• The Jewish Home (Habayit Hayehudi): 13 seats (currently has 12 seats)
• Shas: 12 seats (currently has 11)
• Kadima: ZERO! (currently has 2 seats and it was the largest party in the Knesset just a few months ago!)
• United Torah Judaism (UTJ Party): 7 seats (no change)
• Balad (Arab party): 4 seats (currently has 3 seats)
• Ta’al (United Arab List): 4 seats (no change)

It is worth mentioning that though Lapid has always performed very poorly in the various election’s polls, he still scored very high when Haaretz asked in a poll “which politician would you like to spend an evening with?”, Lapid scored for the top 7 politicians that Israelis liked the most, right next to Bibi.