Religious Zionists
Who Israel's national-religious Jews are, how their towns have voted since 2019, what they think on the six election issues, and why the 2026 vote splits them.
Vote intention among national-religious voters.
Source: Dialog for Ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth, Aug 31 – Sept 2, 2026, 508 national-religious members of Dialog's online panel (484 asked again after the Religious Zionism–Zehut union); weighted by sex; margin of error 4.4 points. A survey of voters who identify as national-religious, not a count of votes. Respondents described themselves as "national-religious stream" (50%), "religious Zionism" (33%) or "Torani-leumi" (Hardal, 17%). A further 2% named another party and 1% said they would not vote.
Facts checked October 5, 2026. Every number shows its source and date.
Size, growth and geography
Religious Zionists, also called national-religious Jews (dati leumi in Hebrew), combine Orthodox practice with full participation in the Zionist state: army service, state schools of their own, and a political movement that has been at the center of West Bank settlement. In the Central Bureau of Statistics' 2026 survey, 12.4% of Jewish adults described themselves as "religious" (dati), the official category closest to this group (CBS via Ynet, Sept 2026). That is about one Jewish adult in eight.
The growth shows up among children. State-religious schools took 29,470 of the 138,406 Jewish first-graders who started school in 2025–26, or 21.3%, up from 19.6% in 2000 (Education Ministry figures via Times of Israel, Aug 2025). Those schools also enroll children from traditional families, so enrollment is not the same as family identity. CBS fertility figures cited by the Jewish People Policy Institute give women who call themselves dati 3.88 children on average, against 2.0 for secular women; the page does not state the data years (JPPI, 2023).
No CBS table of the national-religious population by town or district could be obtained for this page. The best evidence of where the movement is concentrated is the vote: in West Bank settlements such as Beit El, Eli and Kedumim, its lists take most of the ballots (see below and Settlers).
The Hardal camp (from Haredi leumi, "Haredi-national") is the movement's strictest wing. IDI offers it as a separate answer in its surveys and describes it as "a relatively small group" (IDI, June 2026); the CBS has no Hardal category, and no primary source gives its size. The Open University sociologist Yagil Levy calls it "the ideological core of the settlement movement," controlling "a dense network of hesder yeshivas and religious pre-military academies," and "a Hardal minority, comprising only a few percentage points of the Jewish population" (K. La Revue, Feb 2026).
The group carries a large share of the reserve burden. In 2025, 4.3% of men aged 21 to 44 who define themselves as religious served in the reserves in an average month, against 1.7% of secular men and 0.3% of Haredi men, by CBS Labor Force Survey data (IDI, Aug 2026). National-religious men were 14.7% of men 21–44 but 27.4% of male reservists in 2024 (IDI, Jan 2025). The full reserve chart is on the Haredi draft page. In officer ranks, Orthodox men rose from 2.5% of infantry officer-course graduates in the early 1990s to more than 25%, by figures in a 2015 report that cites a 2013 book edited by Reuven Gal, a former IDF psychologist (CS Monitor, Apr 2015). No official dataset of officers since then, or of fallen soldiers by religiosity, has been published.
How their towns have voted, 2019–2022
The table shows how these towns voted in the five elections from April 2019 to November 2022, computed from the Central Elections Committee's locality files. Five are West Bank settlements; Givat Shmuel is inside the Green Line. A town is not a population group: these towns have residents who are not national-religious, and soldiers' envelope ballots are counted nationally, not by town, which matters for a group that serves heavily.
Share of valid votes cast at each town's polling stations, Knesset elections 21–25.
| Town | Apr 2019 | Sep 2019 | Mar 2020 | Mar 2021 | Nov 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beit El | URWP 71.1 · Likud 11.0 · New Right 9.0 | Yamina 67.5 · Otzma 13.3 · Likud 12.3 | Yamina 67.5 · Likud 19.6 · UTJ 6.6 | RZ 74.8 · Yamina 11.3 · Likud 9.5 | RZ 83.2 · Likud 9.7 · Jewish Home 2.5 |
| Eli | URWP 55.7 · Likud 18.8 · New Right 16.0 | Yamina 62.5 · Likud 17.9 · Otzma 10.3 | Yamina 56.9 · Likud 30.0 · UTJ 5.9 | RZ 58.9 · Yamina 18.2 · Likud 16.0 | RZ 75.3 · Likud 15.5 · Jewish Home 3.5 |
| Kedumim | URWP 50.5 · New Right 20.0 · Likud 19.2 | Yamina 64.2 · Likud 17.7 · Otzma 11.4 | Yamina 61.1 · Likud 28.9 · UTJ 3.0 | RZ 56.2 · Yamina 21.9 · Likud 16.5 | RZ 72.7 · Likud 16.2 · Jewish Home 5.6 |
| Kiryat Arba | URWP 45.8 · Likud 33.4 · New Right 6.7 | Likud 32.4 · Yamina 32.1 · Otzma 23.2 | Likud 45.1 · Yamina 32.9 · Otzma 7.1 | RZ 53.8 · Likud 29.0 · Yamina 6.5 | RZ 67.4 · Likud 21.3 · Shas 3.4 |
| Efrat | New Right 34.1 · Likud 24.4 · URWP 22.8 | Yamina 59.8 · Likud 23.7 · Otzma 6.1 | Yamina 52.7 · Likud 34.8 · Blue and White 5.5 | Yamina 43.0 · RZ 25.5 · Likud 16.4 | RZ 48.1 · Likud 19.8 · Jewish Home 15.4 |
| Givat Shmuel | Likud 25.4 · Blue and White 22.9 · New Right 16.7 | Yamina 31.1 · Likud 24.9 · Blue and White 23.2 | Likud 30.9 · Yamina 28.9 · Blue and White 24.5 | Yamina 24.1 · Likud 20.9 · RZ 14.9 | RZ 24.0 · Likud 23.9 · Yesh Atid 14.6 |
| Nationwide, selected lists | Likud 26.5 · URWP 3.7 · New Right 3.2 | Likud 25.1 · Yamina 5.9 · Otzma 1.9 | Likud 29.5 · Yamina 5.2 · Otzma 0.4 | Likud 24.2 · Yamina 6.2 · RZ 5.1 | Likud 23.4 · RZ 10.8 · Jewish Home 1.2 |
Source: Central Elections Committee locality results (files for Knesset 21–25), computed for this page, Apr 2019 – Nov 2022. Each list is shown under the name it ran with that year. URWP: Union of Right-Wing Parties (Jewish Home, Tkuma and Otzma Yehudit), April 2019. New Right: Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked's list, April 2019. Yamina: the alliance of New Right, Jewish Home and National Union, headed by Ayelet Shaked in September 2019; in 2021, Naftali Bennett's list. UTJ: United Torah Judaism. Otzma: Otzma Yehudit running alone. RZ: the Religious Zionism joint list (Religious Zionism, Otzma Yehudit and Noam), 2021 and 2022. Jewish Home: Ayelet Shaked's list, 2022. In 2026 Religious Zionism runs with Zehut and Otzma Yehudit runs separately. Soldiers' and other envelope ballots are counted nationally, not by town. Files for earlier elections: media21–media24.bechirot.gov.il/files/expc.csv.
See Beit El on the vote map: Religious Zionism–Otzma Yehudit (83.2%), Nov 2022
Three patterns stand out. In Beit El, Eli and Kedumim, the vote consolidated behind the Religious Zionism list once Naftali Bennett's Yamina faded: Beit El went from 71.1% for the Union of Right-Wing Parties in April 2019 to 83.2% for Religious Zionism in 2022. Kiryat Arba gave Otzma Yehudit 23.2% when it ran alone in September 2019, and Likud is strong there in every cycle (21–45%). Efrat is the other end of the range: New Right and then Yamina led there in every election to 2021, and in 2022 Ayelet Shaked's Jewish Home still took 15.4% and National Unity 6.9%, against 1.19% and 9.08% nationally.
A survey view points the same way. In IDI's pooled post-election surveys, national-religious voters (Hardal included) gave the Religious Zionism joint list 45% in 2022, up from 30% in 2021, as Yamina's 27% gave way to Jewish Home's 9%; Likud held at about 23% and 22.5%, and lists of the opposition took 9% and 10.5% (IDI, June 2026). The joint list was not mainly this group's party, though: only 43% of its 2022 voters were national-religious, and 37% were traditional (see Masorti Israel for Otzma Yehudit's base).
For 2026 the movement's lists are running apart. Religious Zionism runs with Moshe Feiglin's Zehut, Otzma Yehudit runs alone, and Ofer Winter's new Amcha Yisrael (People of Israel) competes for the same voters. A Dialog poll of national-religious voters for Ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth, taken Aug 31–Sept 2, 2026 among 508 members of Dialog's online panel (484 of them asked again after the Religious Zionism–Zehut union; margin of error 4.4 points), is the only 2026 survey of the group found:
In the same poll, 23% said they felt "politically homeless" (Ynet, Sept 2026). IDI has published no 2026 vote intention by religiosity.
What they think on the issues
The Haredi draft. In the Dialog poll, this was the issue on which the fewest respondents felt the government represented their views: 32% said it represented them to a large or very large extent on Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) enlistment and equal sharing of the burden, against 68% on settlement and 61% on security policy, while 37% said it represented them little or not at all. 15% named the draft as their most important issue (Ynet, Sept 2026). In March 2026, asked about the government's decision to suspend the Military Service Exemption Law and transfer billions of shekels to Haredi institutions, 37% of national-religious respondents called it "a political deal that prioritizes sectoral interests" and 34% "a responsible decision" (IDI, March 2026).
Courts. Trust in the Supreme Court stood at 19% among national-religious Jews in 2025, against 66% among secular Jews, and 75% agreed that the court "intervenes too much in government decisions" (IDI Democracy Index, May 2025).
Share expressing trust in each institution.
National religiousSecular
- IDF
- Supreme Court
- Attorney General
- Government
- Media
The numbers: Trust in institutions: national-religious and secular Jews
| Institution | National religious | Secular |
|---|---|---|
| IDF | 84% | 87% |
| Supreme Court | 19% | 66% |
| Attorney General | 14% | 65% |
| Government | 36% | 9% |
| Media | 9% | 42.5% |
Source: Israel Democracy Institute, Israeli Democracy Index 2025 (Tables 2.4, 2.6, 2.11, 2.12, 2.18), May 4–28, 2025, 1,205 Jewish respondents; the national-religious subsample is about 155, so its figures carry a wide margin. IDI's national-religious category includes respondents who identify as Haredi leumi (Hardal).
War and hostages. In March 2026, 87% supported continuing Operation Roaring Lion against Iran, against 67.5% of secular Jews (IDI, March 2026). The share agreeing that "Israel ensures the security of its citizens" rose from 32% in 2022 to 65% in 2025, while among secular Jews it fell from 52% to 30% (IDI, May 2025). IDI's breakdowns by religiosity on a hostage deal are published only as chart images, so no figure is given here.
West Bank. No 2024–26 survey publishes a national-religious figure on annexation. The most recent with a separate row on settlements is Pew's 2014–15 survey, in which 68% of Datiim said settlements help Israel's security and 13% said they hurt it (Pew, 2016). In the 2026 Dialog poll, 14% named settlement as their most important issue.
Religion and state. In the Dialog poll, 25% named Jewish identity as their most important issue, second only to security (35%). In 2025, 14% named religious–secular tension as the most acute in Israeli society, up from 7% a year earlier (IDI, May 2025). In Pew's 2014–15 survey, the only one with this question for the group, 69% of Datiim favored making halakha (Jewish law) state law for Jews.
Economy. No 2025–26 survey breaks out economic questions for this group. The share agreeing that Israel "ensures the welfare of its citizens" rose from 26% in 2022 to 38% in 2025, and 71% said they belong to the stronger groups in society, the highest of any group (IDI, May 2025).
Who they are
Since October 7, 2023, the Haredi exemption has become a dispute inside the movement. More than 2,000 religious-Zionist women, who describe themselves as mothers and wives of Torah scholars, organized as Partners in Service to demand equal service (Times of Israel, Nov 2024). The head of a hesder yeshiva put it in religious terms:
There is absolutely no halachic or moral justification for exempting part of the nation from military service and participation in a mandatory war of rescuing Israel from its enemies.
Where is the sense of shared obligation? Why do we as a family need to sacrifice so much for the state at a significant risk?
The voters Ynet interviewed alongside its September 2026 poll show the split. Aviad, 29, of Ofra, named the Haredi draft as the government's gravest failure. Liat Zamir, 28, a Jerusalem tour guide, said she had relied on Ben-Gvir and Smotrich on security and that they had not met her expectations. Moti Cohen, 34, a lawyer in Petah Tikva, said Smotrich best represents the values of religious Zionism (Ynet, Sept 2026).