Israel votes, and the count is only the first sum

Israelis vote today in the election of the 26th Knesset, the first national vote since the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023 and the wars that followed³. The Independent counts about half a million first-time voters³. Benjamin Netanyahu, 77, goes into it with 19 accumulated years as prime minister since 1996³. His main challenger is Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief, whose Yashar party led every one of the last four broadcaster polls¹.

You will hear a great deal today about who “wins”. Keep one number in your head instead: 61. That is the majority of the 120-seat Knesset a government needs, and on the final polls nobody reaches it^1,2.

What the last polls said. Israeli law bans new polls from the Friday before election day until voting closes⁴, so the last published pictures date from Friday. Averaged across Channel 12, Channel 13, Channel 14 and Maariv, the opposition “change bloc” stood at 54 seats and Netanyahu’s bloc at 49.5, with the Arab parties at 14.5 combined¹. Channel 12 had the blocs at 56 and 50; Channel 13 at 54 and 50; the public broadcaster Kan at 52 and 50². At party level, Yashar averaged 22 seats, Likud 19.75 and Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad 14.5¹.

The threshold does the real work. A party needs 3.25% of the national vote to enter the Knesset at all; votes for lists that fall short are, in effect, set aside⁵. The joint Reservists–Economic list of Yoaz Hendel and Yaron Zelekha averaged 3.10% across the four polls, 0.15 points under the line, and crossed it in two of them with four seats each time¹. Ofer Winter’s People of Israel averaged 2.88% and failed in all four¹. Desk arithmetic: even the change bloc’s best final poll, 56 seats, is five short of 61, so a four-seat list that lands just above or just below 3.25% is worth almost the whole gap.

The wildcard is turnout. About 1.2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel are eligible to vote³. The Independent reports polls suggesting Arab turnout near 60%, with organisers aiming for 70%, which could lift the Joint List and Ra’am to a combined 15 seats³. Higher turnout also raises the number of votes needed to clear the threshold, which squeezes the fringe on both sides³. Both main Jewish-led camps have publicly ruled out governing with the Arab lists³. Ra’am’s Mansour Abbas has said he is open to the change bloc; several parties in it have said no².

The noise of the last weekend. On Sunday Netanyahu said Donald Trump was ready to act to “finally, finally, remove the Iranian threat”, as long as he himself stayed in office³. Asked about it, the White House said the United States “will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the midterm elections”³. Campaign speeches end tonight. The Knesset’s arithmetic does not.

What is actually on the ballot. Supporters of the prime minister point to his security experience; critics want accountability for the failures before 7 October⁵. Military-service exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men and the cost of living have also shaped the campaign⁵. On Palestinian statehood, there is less of a choice than the noise suggests: Netanyahu, Eisenkot and the leaders of nearly all Jewish-led parties oppose an independent Palestinian state³. Netanyahu also faces a long-running corruption trial, which he calls a witch hunt, and an International Criminal Court arrest warrant³.

The dull machinery. The army has set up more than 850 military polling stations, about a quarter of them mobile, including units in the West Bank, southern Lebanon, south-western Syria and Gaza, staffed by around 3,000 soldiers³. Soldiers’ ballots go in double envelopes, which is why the final count always takes longer than the exit poll³. Exit polls come at 22:00 Israel time, 21:00 CET^2,3. After that come the certified results, then the president’s consultations, then weeks of bargaining.

So treat tonight’s exit polls as a weather report, not a verdict. A deadlocked parliament is not a broken state: it is a state where the voters have not handed anyone a blank cheque. The interesting work, and the honest test of every promise made this month, begins tomorrow morning, in rooms with no cameras.