Photo: Clema12 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Israel's election has produced no clear winner, according to exit polls published Tuesday night, with neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc nor the opposition bloc led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot reaching the 61 seats needed to form a government in the 120-seat Knesset.
The exit polls from Channels 11, 12 and 13, released after polls closed at 10 p.m. Israel time, put Netanyahu's bloc at around 50 to 52 seats and the opposition bloc — comprising Yashar, B'Yachad, Yisrael Beytenu and the Democrats — at around 49 to 53 seats. Two of the channels put both blocs tied at 51 seats each, leaving neither camp with an immediate path to a governing coalition.
The numbers behind the deadlock
Netanyahu's Likud party remains the largest single party, projected at 24 to 27 seats, while Eisenkot's Yashar party is projected at 21 to 23 seats. Smaller right-wing factions hovering near the electoral threshold were projected to miss the 3.25 percent cutoff needed to enter parliament, complicating Netanyahu's coalition math further.
The Arab parties — the Joint List and Ra'am — were projected to win a combined 17 to 19 seats, potentially making them kingmakers in coalition talks. But opposition leaders have largely ruled out forming a government with the Arab parties, with the exception of the Democrats' Yair Golan, leaving both main blocs short of a workable majority.
Turnout reached 77.7 percent by 10 p.m., up from 70.6 percent at the same hour in the 2022 election — the highest at that hour since 1999, according to Central Elections Committee figures reported by Israeli media.
What both camps said
The opposition bloc declared victory shortly after the exit polls were released, even without a majority in hand. Eisenkot himself struck a more cautious note, saying that "currently there aren't numbers for a government" — an acknowledgment that weeks of coalition bargaining may lie ahead.
Netanyahu's camp has not conceded, and the prime minister would remain in office in a caretaker capacity if no coalition can be formed quickly. Exit polls in Israel have a mixed record and are subject to error; preliminary results from the Central Elections Committee were expected to begin flowing in overnight and may vary from the exit polls.
Why this election mattered
Tuesday's vote was the first since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks, and it was widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu's handling of the attacks and the wars that followed in Gaza, Lebanon and with Iran. The campaign unfolded amid deep divisions over security accountability and the independence of Israel's democratic institutions — and, on election day itself, duelling fraud claims from both camps before a single ballot was counted.
The official count is due to be completed in the coming days, with formal results presented to the president next week. Only then will coalition consultations begin in earnest — and only then will Israel learn whether its most consequential election in years produces a government, or a prolonged political stalemate.
Sources: The Jerusalem Post (Channels 11, 12 and 13 exit polls, bloc projections, Likud 24–27 and Yashar 21–23 seats, opposition victory declaration, threshold projections); Al Jazeera (51–51 tie projection, Arab parties at 18 seats, exit polls subject to error, preliminary results expected in coming hours, caretaker scenario); Tribune India / Times of Israel reporting (77.7 percent turnout, Eisenkot "no numbers for a government" remark, Joint List and Ra'am at 17–18 seats). Exit polls are projections, not final results, and the seat counts vary slightly between channels.