Israelis go to the polls on October 27 in what is already being described as Benjamin Netanyahu’s last stand — the first national vote since the October 7, 2023 attacks, and one increasingly shaped not by Israeli politics alone but by open friction with Washington.
Netanyahu was reportedly counting on the opposite dynamic. According to Israeli reporting, the prime minister expected a Trump visit to function as a de facto campaign endorsement, with the president publicly hailing him as the indispensable wartime leader who saved Israel. Instead, the run-up to the election has delivered what one Israeli outlet called “a daily dose of humiliation.” Trump has rebuked Netanyahu in harsh terms over strikes on Beirut that complicated US negotiations with Iran, and has openly criticized him for insubordination in failing to fully back the US-Iran memorandum of understanding. Vance’s escalating public criticism of Israeli officials — including his accusation that some are running an influence campaign to prolong the war — has compounded the sense that Netanyahu’s closest patron has turned unpredictable.
From Asset to Liability
For a leader who has built his political identity on being the only man who can manage Israel’s relationship with Washington, the optics matter as much as the substance. Analysts covering the campaign describe an “inconclusive war with Iran,” a failure to deliver decisive victories against Hamas or Hezbollah, and a visible falling-out with Israel’s essential benefactor as the three forces now defining how voters see Netanyahu’s wartime record. The election is widely framed as a referendum on that record, and on the October 7 security failure specifically — a framing Netanyahu has resisted by pushing for narrower internal reviews rather than the state commission of inquiry the opposition is demanding.
The polling reflects the shift. Most surveys put a Bennett-led opposition bloc at roughly 58 to 60 Knesset seats against 50 to 52 for Netanyahu’s coalition — short of a majority for either side, but a meaningfully worse position than Likud has held for most of the war. A Channel 13 poll released this week put the opposition as high as 61 seats, the first survey in over a month to show a clear path to unseating him. Netanyahu also continues to stand trial on corruption charges, adding personal stakes — including the possibility of prison time — to what was already a fight for his coalition’s survival.
A Campaign Netanyahu No Longer Controls
The core problem for Netanyahu’s campaign is that the war he hoped would cement his legacy as Israel’s wartime protector has instead become the lens voters are using to judge his failures. Military action against Iran retained broad support among Jewish Israeli voters, reflecting the country’s hawkish security instincts, but that support has not converted into a political dividend for the prime minister personally. Meanwhile, the ultra-Orthodox draft exemption crisis and battles over judicial reform have added domestic fronts to a campaign Netanyahu had hoped to fight primarily on security.
None of this guarantees defeat. Likud still leads individual party polling even as the coalition falls behind, and Israeli coalition math has produced come-from-behind outcomes before. But the strategy Netanyahu appeared to be counting on — a wartime security record burnished by an enthusiastic Trump endorsement — has given way to a campaign fought against the backdrop of public rebukes from his own party’s counterparts in Washington. Whether that costs him the election outright or simply narrows his path to a governing coalition, it has already reshaped how the race is being run.
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