The Central Elections Committee count is past 40% of the ballot boxes on Wednesday morning, and the shape of the 26th Knesset is getting harder to argue with. Neither camp gets to 61. The open question now is how close the Netanyahu bloc lands, and whether the Arab parties end up holding the balance on paper or in practice.
Here’s where the official count stood with about 37% of valid votes in (roughly 2.1 million ballots, after a 77.7% turnout, the highest since 1999):
Netanyahu bloc: 57 seats. Likud 28, United Torah Judaism 8, Shas 7, Otzma Yehudit 7, Religious Zionism and Zehut 7.
Change bloc: 47 seats. Yashar (Eisenkot) 21, Together (Bennett) 11, Yisrael Beiteinu 8, The Democrats 7.
Arab parties: 16 seats. Joint List 12, Ra’am 4.
That’s the snapshot. It isn’t the result.
Why the early count flatters the right
The Netanyahu bloc opened the night at 63 seats with a fifth of the votes counted. It slid to 59 at around 30%, then 57 by the 37-42% mark. Every update so far has moved the same way, and the reason is mechanical. Small towns, development towns and Haredi cities report early. Tel Aviv, Haifa, the big central suburbs and Arab towns with large polling stations come in later. In Tel Aviv, with only a few dozen boxes counted, Eisenkot’s camp was taking around 70% of the vote. Bnei Brak, meanwhile, was already mostly in.
Then there are the double envelopes. Soldiers, prisoners, hospital patients and diplomats cast an estimated 650,000 of them, counted at the Knesset on Wednesday and Thursday. Soldier votes have tilted right in past elections, but the pool is big and mixed, and it usually moves a seat or two at most.
The exit polls, for what they’re worth, sat well below the live count. Kan, Channel 12 and Channel 13 all put the Netanyahu bloc at 50 to 52 by their late-night updates. i24 had 55. Channel 14 had 60 and was the outlier.
The estimate
Projecting the remaining boxes forward on the current trend, and splitting the gap between the raw count and the main exit polls, my working estimate for the final allocation is:
Netanyahu bloc: 53 to 55 seats.
Change bloc: 49 to 51 seats.
Arab parties: 16 to 17 seats.
Likud should finish as the largest party, somewhere around 26 or 27. Yashar holds near 21. The Joint List is having a historic night either way.
Two thresholds can still flip the arithmetic. Ra’am is sitting around 3.8%, above the 3.25% line but not by much. If it slipped under, its four seats would be redistributed across everyone else, and the Likud bloc would pick up its share. The Reservists and Economic Party (Hendel and Zelikha) is at about 2.7%. It won’t make it on the current numbers, and those votes are effectively lost to the change camp.
What the numbers mean for a government
Neither bloc can form a coalition alone. Netanyahu needs six to eight seats he doesn’t have, and none of the change parties have signalled they’d join him. Eisenkot’s camp is further away still unless it leans on Arab parties. Ra’am sat in a coalition before, in 2021. The Joint List has never been part of one.
So the likely outcome is a long stretch of consultations at the President’s residence, pressure on the smaller parties, and real talk of a fifth election in seven years.
Final results are due in the official gazette by November 4. Until then, the seat count will keep moving.