Kan exit poll shows no clear victor: Netanyahu’s Likud is largest party but opponents have larger bloc

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party has won the highest share of votes in Tuesday’s election, but neither of Israel’s two political camps has a clear path to forming a government, the Kan public broadcaster’s exit poll shows.

Likud’s projected lead after polls closed at 10 p.m. defies months of polls that showed the party trailing Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar.

Now, however, Kan projects Likud winning 25 seats out of a possible 120, compared to 21 for Yashar.

Overall, however, the anti-Netanyahu bloc led by Eisenkot is projected to win more seats, with 53 out of a possible 120, compared with 50 for the Netanyahu-led bloc.

Arab-led parties, which are opposed to Netanyahu but are not part of the Zionist anti-Netanyahu bloc, are projected to win 17 seats.

As such, the poll shows both blocs falling short of the 61-seat majority necessary to form a government, leaving no clear path to victory for Netanyahu or for Eisenkot.

While Likud’s victory over Yashar is an upset after months of polls showing the results swinging the other way, the lack of any clear victor was expected.

As such, both blocs will now get to work trying to cobble together a coalition — with Netanyahu expected to be given first shot at it by dint of having the largest party — but it is possible that neither side will succeed and Israelis will have to return to the polls in just a few months. This scenario would be reminiscent of the political crisis of 2019-2022, with its five rounds of elections.

In third place, Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad is projected to win 14 seats.

The Arab-led Joint List and the left-wing Democrats are projected to win 10 seats each, while Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu wins a projected eight seats.

The far-right Otzma Yehudit and the Islamist Ra’am are projected to win seven seats each.

Rounding out the projected results are the ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism, all with six seats.

Meanwhile, two smaller parties that had been hovering around the electoral threshold for months — Yoaz Hendel’s Reservists-Economic party and Ofer Winter’s People of Israel — are both projected to fall below the 3.25% threshold and miss out on entering the Knesset.

The exit poll is to be updated every 30 minutes throughout the night as more data comes in.