Pinned
Initial exit polls showed that a bloc of opposition parties held a narrow lead over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies in Israel’s pivotal election on Tuesday, with neither side having won enough seats for a parliamentary majority.
After voters turned out at the highest rate in more than a quarter-century, exit polls published by Israel’s mainstream television networks showed that Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party held a small lead over that of Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief whose son was killed in the Gaza war.
Ultimately, the performance of specific parties is less important than that of the overall blocs. Israel’s exit polls have a spotty history of accuracy, particularly in tight races, but if their results are confirmed, no clear victor was in sight as Election Day drew to a close.
Over the coming days, after official vote totals are released and parliamentary seats are allocated to parties, Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, will invite the party leader he thinks has the best chance to assemble a governing coalition. Such a coalition would have to be made up of at least 61 lawmakers.
The first exit polls published by Israel’s largest broadcasters immediately after the polls closed at 10 p.m. local time (4 p.m. Eastern) indicated that Mr. Netanyahu’s party would win the most parliamentary seats by a small margin.
Those polls showed the two Arab parties winning as many as 17 or 18 seats in Parliament, which, if confirmed, would be their strongest showing ever.
Their strength could complicate matters for Mr. Eisenkot. He and some of his potential partners have balked at relying on the Arab parties’ support in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel. Without the Arab parties, the opposition bloc appeared to hold only a narrow advantage over the Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition, most of the exit polls showed.
The exit polls suggest that neither bloc will be able to form a government on its own without relying on the Arab parties. One option analysts are already weighing is whether Mr. Netanyahu, who has led the most far-right government in Israeli history, could join with Mr. Eisenkot to form a unity government. But the creation of such an alliance faces major obstacles, given how deeply Mr. Eisenkot’s voters despise Mr. Netanyahu. And the two would have to agree on which of them would run the government. Mr. Netanyahu is unlikely to give up control, while Mr. Eisenkot has called him unfit to lead Israel.
The election was Israel’s first since the Oct. 7 attack, which was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust and ignited three years of war that left Gaza largely in ruins and nearly all its population displaced.
Turnout appeared to be particularly high among Arab citizens, who make up about a fifth of Israel’s population. Responding to the high turnout in largely Arab towns, Mr. Netanyahu accused Arab citizens of “trying to steal the elections,” repeatedly making overt appeals to anti-Arab prejudice to push his right-wing base to vote.
Dean Livne, the acting director of the committee, told reporters that there were no reports of widespread irregularities.
Both Mr. Netanyahu’s bloc — a coalition of nationalists and ultra-Orthodox Jews — and the diverse group of opposition parties loosely led by Mr. Eisenkot framed the election as a make-or-break moment for the country.
Mr. Netanyahu’s bloc offered the promise of a more religious Israel with an ever-tighter grip over the West Bank and Gaza. Mr. Eisenkot’s bloc portrayed the vote as the last chance to preserve liberal democracy and pull Israel back from the brink of becoming a pariah state under international sanctions. Its leaders also called for a reckoning over what they call Mr. Netanyahu’s failure to prevent the Oct. 7 attacks, and pledged to repair Israel’s shattered image abroad, including by cracking down on Israeli extremist violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Mr. Netanyahu has resisted the establishment of an independent commission to investigate the Oct. 7 attacks. He has vowed to move ahead with overhauling Israel’s judicial system, which critics say could undermine the country’s democracy. And his allies say they hope to permanently entrench Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza.
Naftali Bennett, who leads a party in the alliance opposing Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc, said the sitting prime minister had lost the election. In a fiery televised address to a gathering of supporters, he tied Netanyahu to the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s worst security failure in decades. “The government of Oct. 7 will go home,” he said.
He said the anti-Netanyahu parties “will do everything, setting ego aside” to form a government that will insist on conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews into the military. He did not address whether that might include Netanyahu’s Likud party, or one or more Arab parties.
Not reflected in exit polls are hundreds of thousands of ballots cast at special polling stations, including on military bases, in hospitals, prisons, and embassies. In the previous election, those votes leaned toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. This year, the election authorities estimated that roughly 600,000 such votes would be cast, accounting for about 10 percent of eligible voters. Results from those ballots are not expected to be announced before Thursday.
Tel Aviv
A supporter of Gadi Eisenkot, an opposition leader, awaiting election results.
Tel Aviv
Voters lined up at a polling station.
Jerusalem
A polling station. Israelis voted in one of the most consequential elections in their country’s history.
Jerusalem
The Central Elections Committee during voting.
Jerusalem
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara Netanyahu, casting their ballots.
Herzliya, Israel
Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israeli military chief of staff, and his wife voting at a polling station.
Hebron, West Bank
Israeli settlers and border police officers lining up to vote.
Ramat Gan, IsraelA billboard featuring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Trump, with a message to vote for Mr. Netanyahu.
Umm al-Fahm, Israel
Casting ballots in one of the largest Arab towns in Israel.
Kiryat Arba, West Bank
Settlers checking a voter list at a school used as a polling station.
Tel Aviv
Tuesday’s vote was the first Israeli election since the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister, was the first leader of a party in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition to speak following tonight’s exit polls. He neither declared victory for his bloc nor conceded defeat. “The night is still young,” he told supporters at a televised gathering. He said he hoped that the bloc led by Netanyahu “was close to forming a right-wing government.”
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The leader of the Democrats party, Yair Golan, declared victory on Tuesday night for the opposition bloc, which includes his party, and asserted that the exit polls showed that the Israeli public had “fired Netanyahu and Likud.” Addressing supporters, Golan urged opposition leaders to swiftly form a “change government” without letting ego or political calculations delay the process. “From tonight, Israel can breathe,” he said. “Tomorrow, we begin rebuilding.” He expressed a willingness to rely on support from outside the opposition alliance to secure a parliamentary majority, an apparent reference to the Arab parties.
Another surprise in the exit polls was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s apparent surge on Election Day. While the most recent pre-election surveys showed his Likud party with about 20 seats in Parliament, the exit polls show Likud winning 24, more than any other party. That is an important symbolic victory for Netanyahu, and one that few could have foreseen for the prime minister who was in charge on Oct. 7, 2023.
It suggests that Netanyahu’s hair-on-fire appeal to voters on Election Day worked — but only so much. The extra four seats he picked up, according to the exit polls, came at the expense of his allies, not the opposition bloc.
Judging by exit polls, one major suprise in this election is the high turnout among Israel’s Arab citizens, who were furious at the current government over its housing policies and its failure to curb violent crime in Arab communities.
Pre-election surveys suggested that the two main Arab parties would win about 13 seats, but the exit polls suggest they will end up with closer to 17 or 18 seats. In the past, Arab parties have never won more than 15.
Mansour Abbas, the leader of the Raam party, told a television interviewer on Tuesday night that the turnout showed that “frustration and despair” in Israel’s Arab society had “turned to hope.”
Mansour Abbas, the leader of an Arab party that could prove pivotal to the opposition’s efforts to form a majority coalition, said he wanted to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “in every possible way.” In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12, he said his immediate priority was to “ensure that there is a chance of forming a government” opposed to Netanyahu. “And then, we will discuss the details,” he said, “and address the challenges.”
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Initial exit polls suggest that Arab parties are likely to win a historic number of seats in Israel’s Parliament.
The polls released by Israeli TV channels gave Raam and the Joint List, the two major Arab parties, either 17 or 18 of the Knesset’s 120 seats.
“The Arabs feel this government did everything to marginalize them and even incite against them,” said Thabet Abu Ras, an expert in Arab-Jewish relations and an Arab citizen of Israel. “They understood they needed to fight for their citizenship and play the political game fully.”
Israel’s Central Election Committee just updated the country’s turnout rate to 77.7 percent, the highest since 1999. Israelis headed in large numbers to the polls on Tuesday, particularly among the country’s Arab minority, who were spurred by a desire to unseat Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline coalition.
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In 2021, Israel’s short-lived anti-Netanyahu government included for the first time an independent Arab party, Raam. The backlash to that catapulted anti-Arab politicians like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich into the next government. According to exit polls, the backlash to that government appears to have resulted today in a record showing for Israel’s Arab parties.
The exit polls suggest Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition may well be deadlocked with his Jewish opponents, and neither would be able to form a government on their own without relying on Arab parties. One option already being weighed by analysts is whether Netanyahu and his main rival, Gadi Eisenkot, could form a unity government of Israel’s right-wing and centrist parties. Such an alliance might be hard for Eisenkot to accept given how deeply his own voters despise Netanyahu. And then there’s also the question of who would run the government. Netanyahu is unlikely to give up control, and Eisenkot has vowed not to join a government run by someone he has called unfit to lead Israel.
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There have been precedents in the past where the party with the most seats in Parliament does not end up forming a government. In Israel’s 2009 election, Tzipi Livni’s centrist Kadima party won 28 seats, narrowly beating Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative Likud, which won 27. But Netanyahu had more support from allied parties and came back as prime minister after a decade spent out of politics or in the opposition.
A few activists were celebrating at the Likud Party’s election headquarters in Jerusalem even though most exit polls suggested that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s alliance of parties had won fewer seats than the bloc of parties seeking his ouster. “Bibi is the king! The king is Bibi!” they shouted, using a nickname for the Israeli leader.
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