Polls close across Israel as exit polls show no clear winner

If the exit polls prove close to the final results, neither side would have a straightforward path to government.

By World Israel News Staff

Voting in Israel’s national election came to an end at 10 p.m. Tuesday, with the first exit polls showing dramatically different outcomes but no political bloc securing the 61 Knesset seats required for a majority.

The projections ranged from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc coming within a single seat of a majority to falling 11 seats short, leaving the outcome of the election wide open as the official vote count begins.

Channel 14 presented by far the strongest result for Netanyahu, projecting his right-wing bloc at 60 seats, just one short of a majority. The network gave Likud 30 seats, Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar 19 and Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad 11. The opposition bloc received 43 seats and the Arab parties 17.

The other major networks painted a considerably more difficult picture for Netanyahu.

An updated Channel 12 exit poll projected Likud as the largest party with 24 seats, followed by Yashar with 22 and B’Yachad with 12. The Joint List received 11, the Democrats 10, Shas eight, Yisrael Beytenu eight, Ra’am seven, and United Torah Judaism, Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism six each.

That left Netanyahu’s bloc at 50 seats, the opposing bloc at 52 and the Arab parties with 18.

Kan’s updated projection produced nearly identical bloc numbers. The Joint List rose to 11 seats while B’Yachad fell to 13, leaving Netanyahu’s bloc with 50 seats, the opposing bloc with 52 and the Arab parties with 18.

Channel 13’s initial projection put Likud at 25 seats, Yashar at 23 and B’Yachad at 14, with Netanyahu’s bloc receiving 50 seats, the opposition 53 and the Arab parties 17.

The strong showing by the Arab parties is also an important factor in the difficult coalition arithmetic. Fueled by unusually high Arab turnout, the exit polls give the Joint List and Ra’am a combined 17 or 18 seats, compared with 10 seats held by Arab parties in the outgoing Knesset.

Their increased representation leaves fewer mandates available to the two main Jewish-led camps and could make assembling a 61-seat coalition considerably more difficult.

The fate of several smaller parties could also have major consequences for the final result.

Preliminary exit polls indicated that a number of parties failed to cross the 3.25% electoral threshold, including several that had been viewed as potential factors in the coalition battle during the campaign.

With the exceptionally high turnout, current estimates put the number of votes needed to clear the threshold at roughly 186,000.

Votes cast for parties that fail to cross the threshold do not translate into Knesset representation. If significant numbers of votes are lost below the threshold, it could alter the distribution of mandates among the parties that do enter the Knesset and potentially shift the balance between the competing blocs.

The exit polls were released after an Election Day that saw turnout reach 77.7%, up 7.1 percentage points from 2022 and the highest overall turnout since 1999.

If the exit polls prove close to the final results, neither side would have a straightforward path to government. Netanyahu would need to find additional support beyond his current bloc, while Eisenkot and the parties opposed to Netanyahu would also need outside support or a new political alignment to reach 61.

That could put pressure on parties currently aligned with the opposing camps to reconsider their positions, open the door to unconventional coalition negotiations or, if no candidate can assemble a majority, raise the possibility of a prolonged political stalemate.

For now, however, the exit polls remain projections. Even relatively small changes during the actual count could alter the coalition arithmetic, particularly with several parties close to the electoral threshold.

The Central Elections Committee will count the millions of ballots cast Tuesday, while special ballots, including those cast by soldiers and other eligible voters outside their regular polling stations, will take additional time to process.

With the exit polls offering dramatically different pictures of the electorate, the final count will determine whether Netanyahu can close the gap to 61 or whether Israel enters a difficult and uncertain coalition battle.

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