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ONDON — If public opinion in Britain holds firm over the next three weeks, Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader who has been accused of whitewashing anti-Semitism within party ranks, will recapture the party leadership in a landslide.

A poll conducted by YouGov this week showed Corbyn leading challenger Owen Smith by 62 % to 38 %.

The two candidates will have a chance to make their case before the Jewish community on September 18, when they appear for a debate at the Jewish Community Center inLondon.

Corbyn, the current Labour head, has set the tone for the party. The most left-wing leader in decades, Corbyn has in the past called Hamas and Hezbollah “friends” (he later expressed regret for those comments). Earlier this year, more than 30 Labour members were suspended from the party for their anti-Jewish rhetoric. Corbyn eventually ordered an investigation into party anti-Semitism, and human rights lawyer Shami Chakrabarti produced a report that found some anti-Jewish bias within Labour. Jewish advocates, however, said the report did not go far enough to address the problem. For her part, Ms. Chakrabarti was nominated for a peerage by Corbyn, taking a seat in the House of Lords just weeks after the report was released.

Analysts say Corbyn has attracted like-minded members to the party who feel quite safe expressing their offensive views about Jews andIsrael.

Approximately 500,000 new members have joined the party since Corbyn was nominated, leading deputy Labour leader Tom Watson to call these new partisans “Trotsky entryists.”

According to the Jewish Leadership Movement (JLM), a total of 92% of its members back the Welsh MP Owen Smith. But the national feeling is that Corbyn will win the contest easily.

JLM Chairman Jeremy Newmark said it’s too early to speculate on the outcome of the election, but said that Corbyn’s new base of support will certainly help him. “There has been a vast number of new members joining the party over the past year,” he said. “We will wait to see what the eventual outcome will be.” 

A Corbyn victory would spell bad news forIsraelsupporters. The anti-Israel former MP George Galloway, who was expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 for his radical views, has deregistered his political Respect Party and suggested he will rejoin Labour if Corbyn wins again. The unthinkable is possible:Gallowaycould receive a front bench position sitting alongside Jeremy Corbyn in the House of Commons.

But JLM’s Newmark downplays that possibility. According to Newmark, Galloway deregistered his party because it collapsed in the recentLondonmayoral election, taking just over 1% of the vote. “I don’t even thinkGallowayis eligible to rejoin Labour because he actively backed candidates who stood against Labour party candidates in previous elections,” Newmark said. 

Writing in the Daily Mail last month, Jewish businessman Michael Foster, who has donated vast sums of money to the Labour Party in the past, attacked Corbyn’s leadership and described his inner circle as “Sturmabteilung,” the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party that was instrumental in bringing Adolf Hitler to power.

Foster condemned Corbyn’s cronies, writing they had “no respect for others and worse, no respect for the rule of law.” He also said the left-wing grassroots organization Momentum, which was founded to back Corbyn, uses “intimidation” against Corbyn opponents.

To wit, after Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim mayor of a European capital city, said he would not support Corbyn in the coming election, he was bombarded with anti-Semitic messages to his Twitter account that suggested he was an Israeli Zionist spy.

With all of Corbyn’s negatives, it would seem a challenger should be running closer. But Owen Smith has shown himself to be a poor candidate, making a variety of ill-considered statements. Just two weeks ago, Owen said ISIS should be “round the table” in peace talks in theMiddle East. He also refuses to recognize the British referendum result to leave the EU, despite many Labour supporters voting to exit.

Meanwhile, Corbyn, who has said he would “never” use nuclear weapons if he was prime minister, has proposed removing the nuclear missiles from the Trident submarines patrollingBritain’s waters. His economic policies include “spreading the wealth” among the people and he supported the referendum to leave the EU.

The Labour party election will take place on September 24.