Early Exit Polls Point to Israeli Election Stalemate as Netanyahu Trails Challenger Eisenkot

Exit polls from Israel's major television networks, released after voting closed Tuesday, pointed to a result that settles very little: a majority of Israelis appear to have voted against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition, yet his Likud party still came out as the largest single party. Neither Netanyahu's bloc nor the opposition has a clear majority.

The arithmetic matters because Israel's Knesset has 120 seats, and whoever hopes to govern needs majority support there. By the early projections, Netanyahu appears to have won fewer votes than his main challenger, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, but both men are expected to struggle to assemble a coalition. These are exit polls, early ones, and the final count could shift the picture.

One striking feature was the performance of Israel's two Arab parties, which won more seats than in any previous election. Some Arab voters told CBS News that life under Netanyahu's hard-right government had been difficult for them, and that this fed a historic turnout in a community that makes up around 20% of the population. Yet both Netanyahu and his opponents have vowed not to form a government that relies on Arab parties, arguing that doing so would endanger the country if those parties gained influence over how Israel conducts its many conflicts. Keeping the Arab parties out of power was a central tenet of Netanyahu's campaign.

That vow is where the opposition could pivot. Breaking preelection promises is common in Israeli politics, and if the opposition did so, it could take power and remove Netanyahu.

The vote was the first since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, and Israelis went to the polls with the country still fighting a multifront war in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, after two direct rounds of conflict with Iran. For many, three years into the fighting, the election felt existential, and turnout appeared high.

Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister, wants to form another coalition like his current one, which depends on ultranationalist and Jewish religious parties. He told voters the campaigns in Gaza, Lebanon and especially Iran are unfinished and that he needs more time. President Trump backed him loudly last week, reaffirming support for the war the two leaders launched against Iran almost eight months ago. On Truth Social he wrote: "If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so."

Opposing him is a diverse set of parties with differing ideologies and one shared aim: removing Netanyahu. The front-runner to lead this "change bloc" is Eisenkot, who heads the centrist Yashar party. He lost his son and two nephews while they served in the military in Gaza, and he sat in the war cabinet alongside Netanyahu for much of the first year of that war. About half of his party's candidates are women, a sharp contrast with the male-dominated Netanyahu coalition. Eisenkot presents himself as a humble veteran who wants to reunite a country he says Netanyahu has divided. At a rally late Tuesday, according to Reuters, he said the public had voted against Netanyahu serving as prime minister, and that a worthy leader would accept the people's no-confidence and announce his retirement from politics.

Several paths lie ahead. Lawmakers or whole parties could switch sides, which could mean weeks of negotiation. The change bloc could try a minority government, which requires only more seats than the other side rather than 61 of 120; Arab parties could enable that by voting for it or simply abstaining. And if no one can build a coalition, Israel returns to the polls, as it did five times between 2019 and 2022 amid deadlock. Watch the final count, and whether anyone breaks a promise.