Photo: Clema12 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Israelis voted on Tuesday in the country's first election since the October 7 attacks, choosing a new Knesset in a race that pits Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against a bloc led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot. With polls closing at 10 p.m. Israel time, here is how election night and the days after it will unfold.
Tonight: exit polls within minutes of closing
Voting ran from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. local time. The moment polls close, Israel's main television channels publish their exit polls — the first real indication of whether Netanyahu's bloc or the Eisenkot-led opposition has the stronger hand. Exit polls in Israel have a mixed record, so both camps are expected to treat them cautiously.
Preliminary results from the Central Elections Committee then begin flowing in overnight as ballots are counted across the country. Tuesday's vote was marked by record turnout — and by both camps trading fraud claims before a single result was certified, a sign of how tense the count could become.
The days after: final count and official results
The tally is scheduled to be completed by Thursday, October 30, including the double-envelope ballots of soldiers, diplomats and other special voters. The official results are due on Tuesday, November 4, when they are formally presented to the president.
Only then does the coalition math become law. Neither bloc was projected to reach the 61-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset in the final pre-election polls, which means the official results will trigger consultations at the President's Residence and the familiar process of one leader being handed a mandate to try to form a government.
What to watch
Three numbers matter tonight: the size of each bloc in the exit polls, how far the smaller parties land from the 3.25 percent electoral threshold, and whether either camp disputes the count. After a campaign dominated by the war's legacy and questions of trust, Israel may know the shape of its next government by morning — or be headed for weeks of coalition bargaining.
Sources: Times Now; Sunday Guardian; MOHIN TECH reporting on Tuesday's vote