Pollster: Smotrich won over skeptics in 90-minute shul talk

Is the liberal, bourgeois wing of religious Zionism drifting back toward the Religious Zionism party? Pollster and strategic adviser Shlomo Filber shared a personal and thought-provoking post over the weekend about the political shifts he is tracking inside his own community.

Filber wrote that for nearly a decade he has been running an informal "focus group" at the shul where he davens, made up of bourgeois, liberal religious-Zionist men, some of them sharp opponents of the prime minister. The regular political conversations in the lobby during the haftarah reading serve as an accurate pulse check, he said. "Over the past year most of them are considering a return to the right, but 'I have no one to vote for,'" Filber wrote, calling the waverers "lost souls in a severe leadership crisis" who have moved among a wide range of parties and candidates in recent years.

The turning point came this past Shabbos, when Religious Zionism chairman and Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich came to the shul for a talk and kiddush after davening. Filber described how, while Smotrich's visit had been met in advance with grumbling from some members who said there was no place for political gatherings in the simcha hall and even chose to boycott the event, the result on the ground was surprising.

According to Filber, more than 150 people sat for an hour and a half and listened closely to Smotrich, who answered all the hard questions, including the issue of drafting yeshiva students.

"If this community is some kind of litmus test, then there is a chance of seeing those who already swore by their holy ancestors that they would not vote for Smotrich, voting for him in the end," he summed up cautiously, adding that it remains only to wait and see whether the trend will be reflected on election day at the ballot box.