By Ryan Morgan
Contributing Writer
Vote tallying in Israel’s national election began on Tuesday evening, with exit polls from Israeli media showing no clear winner in a multi-party contest.
Early exit polling from Israel’s Channel 12 showed the Likud Party, led by sitting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, projected to win 24 seats — the most of any single party. The same exit polling also showed a bloc of opposition parties are together projected to win about 52 seats, positioning the opposition bloc ahead in the contest to achieve a governing majority of at least 61 seats in Israel’s 120-member Knesset.
The ballot count is not expected to be finalized until Friday, after which it will be published on Nov. 4.
A party must win at least 3.25% of the vote tally to hold any seats in the Knesset.
In the likely event that no single party wins a 61-seat majority, Israeli President Isaac Herzog will choose the political party leader he believes is best positioned to form a governing coalition, and give them up to 42 days to form a multi-party government.
If no coalition is achieved after this first 42-day window, other party leaders may attempt to form a governing coalition before a new election may be called.
The 2026 Israeli election comes just over three years after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and ensuing war in the Gaza Strip and is seen as a referendum on Netanyahu and his Likud-led coalition government.
The Yashar Party, led by former Israel Defense Forces chief of general staff Gadi Eisenkot, is the leading opposition party. Eisenkot and his party have called for the formation of a new government commission to review the Oct. 7 attacks.
Tuesday’s election also comes about eight months into an armed standoff between Israel and Iran.
President Donald Trump, who ordered U.S. forces to join their Israeli counterparts in bombing Iran on Feb. 28, recently endorsed Netanyahu’s reelection bid.
Ahead of election day, Netanyahu raised warnings that Iran may attempt to disrupt voting. In response, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said the outcome of the Israeli election “makes no difference” to Tehran.
Partway through election day, the Likud Party filed a petition to extend voting hours past 10 p.m. local time, when polls were originally set to close. Eisenkot challenged the petition, saying there had been no exceptional event to justify such an extension of hours.
Israel’s Central Elections Commission declined the Likud petition, but has said voters in line before 10 p.m. would still have their ballots counted.
Throughout election day, Netanyahu and members of his current governing coalition also raised alarm about high voter turnout in left-leaning communities and among Arab Israelis.
“My brothers and sisters, right-wing voters, if we don’t go out to vote, we’ll get a government of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Netanyahu said in one election day post on X. “The turnout in the strongholds of the left and the Arab sector is breaking records.”
High voter turnout could make it harder for smaller parties to clear the threshold needed to win Knesset seats.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is a leader in the Likud-aligned Religious Zionist Party, called for right-wing voters to avoid casting ballots for smaller right-wing parties and instead choose the larger ones within Netanyahu’s coalition.
“The chance of the small right-wing parties passing the electoral threshold is zero!” Smotrich wrote. “The right’s victory depends on voting for parties that are certain to pass the electoral threshold.”
Eisenkot also issued last-minute appeals for voters to make Yashar the top party in the ballot tally, in hopes of persuading Herzog to grant him the first opportunity to form a governing coalition.
