With close to all votes counted, Netanyahu bloc has 53 seats, Eisenkot’s 48; Arab parties surge to 19

The Central Elections Committee (CEC) said Thursday evening that with 99.9 percent of ballots counted, the bloc led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was poised to win 53 seats in the 120-member Knesset and the bloc led by Yashar party chair Gadi Eisenkot would win 48 seats, leaving both blocs far from a 61-seat majority.

The two predominantly Arab parties were poised to win a record 19 seats between them, putting them in a potential kingmaker position, after Arab voters turned out in record numbers to vote in Tuesday’s election, hoping to oust Netanyahu and his far-right allies from the seat of power. Their previous high had been 15 seats in 2020.

The picture that had emerged by Thursday evening was different from the one that had been painted in most mainstream polls in the weeks and months leading up to the election, which had almost all shown Eisenkot’s bloc taking the lead over Netanyahu’s with varying margins, though similarly without either having a clear path to a coalition.

It was also a reversal from Tuesday night’s exit polls published by major broadcasters the moment voting ended at 10 p.m., which showed Eisenkot’s bloc ahead of Netanyahu’s by two or three seats.

But as the count was all but concluded on Thursday evening, it appeared that the exit polls had missed the mark, as both Netanyahu’s party and bloc pulled ahead of Eisenkot’s.

In its update at 7:21 p.m. on Thursday, the CEC said 99.9% of votes had been counted, including those from regular ballot boxes and double envelopes.

The bulk of the count on Thursday was taken up by so-called double-envelope votes, of which the CEC said there were around 430,000 to 480,000.

The ballots, cast primarily by soldiers, prisoners, diplomats stationed abroad and others unable to vote at their designated polling stations, are counted separately, as officials are required to verify that each voter has not already voted elsewhere.

The full vote count was due to be released by the CEC on Thursday night. The final, official election results are expected to be published on November 4.

But even with the count not officially complete, a picture was emerging of a divided country, with no clear victory for either Netanyahu’s bloc or Eisenkot’s bloc, unless they are willing to work with each other or with the Arab-led Ra’am and Joint List parties.

As of the 7:21 p.m. update, Netanyahu’s Likud was the largest party with 27 seats out of a possible 120, followed by Eisenkot’s Yashar with 21.

Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad party took 12 seats, and Yousef Jabareen’s Joint List took 11.

Both Ra’am and the left-wing Democrats held eight seats.

The far-right Otzma Yehudit and ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism parties each held seven seats, as did Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu.

Rounding out the 120-seat Knesset were the ultra-Orthodox Shas and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism with six seats each, marking the worst showing for Shas since 1992.

This left Yoaz Hendel’s Reservists-Economic party below the 3.25% electoral threshold with 2.63% of the vote, along with Ofer Winter’s People of Israel, which had collected just 1.7% of the vote.

The Charedi Public, a longshot party that had offered an alternative vision to Israel’s ultra-Orthodox communities, was far below the threshold, with just 0.2% of the vote.

In practice, the division of seats between parties left the Netanyahu-led bloc, comprised of Likud, Shas, United Torah Judaism, Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism, with 53 seats — eight short of a 61-seat majority. The bloc has 68 seats in the current Knesset, marking a significant drop.

Eisenkot’s bloc, made up of Yashar, B’Yachad, The Democrats and Yisrael Beytenu, meanwhile, had a collective 48 seats — 13 short of a majority.

The Arab-led parties — the Joint List and Ra’am — held between them the remaining 19 seats, an all-time high and almost double their current 10 seats. This would be more than enough to tip the anti-Netanyahu bloc into a comfortable majority, if all Zionist bloc members except The Democrats hadn’t ruled out cooperating with Ra’am or the Joint List.