Figures compiled by Knesset correspondent Aharon Rabinowitz compare Shas's current support with its 1992 peak. They show the sharpest drops in southern cities and traditional Sephardic strongholds:
- Dimona: down 48.5%
- Netivot: down 46.3%
- Ofakim: down 45%
- Sderot: down 42.1%
- Ashkelon: down 39.9%
- Netanya: down 39%
- Ashdod: down 37.2%
- Holon: down 29.6%
Cities with large chareidi populations lost less. Support fell 21.5% in Safed, 15.34% in Jerusalem and 9.1% in Tiberias. The report named Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's campaign to pull voters from smaller right-wing parties into Likud as one possible cause. It also said some former Shas voters may have moved to United Torah Judaism, though the size of any such shift has not been established.
The senior Shas official was blunt about where the losses hit hardest. "We took a devastating blow precisely in the places where we thought we were strongest," the official said. "The traditional public, those who wear knitted kippot, and our loyal voters in the periphery who stood with us for years - they simply turned their backs on us. Our grassroots campaign was lifeless."
"While we were trying to work out complicated political calculations, the traditional electorate flocked to Likud and Itamar Ben-Gvir. Likud swallowed up our support in the periphery, and we identified the threat far too late," the official added.
The official also admitted to serious strategic errors in the campaign. "We have to be honest and admit the truth: there was complete blindness here. Instead of fighting for the traditional electorate, we turned inward and abandoned the people in the outlying areas," the official said. According to the official, voters in the periphery felt Shas "no longer represented the combative, national voice they were looking for."
Strains inside the party have surfaced. Rav Moshe Maya shlita, the eldest member of the Council of Torah Sages, Shas's rabbinic decision-making body, tried to contact Deri to understand what had led to the defeat. Ahead of the October 27 election, Rav Maya declared that "anyone who votes for Likud has no share in the World to Come".
United Torah Judaism said no party leaders had approached it. The one exception, it said, was a message from sources close to Netanyahu that he intends to keep the coalition parties together.
