Israel Exit Polls Show No Majority, With Arab Parties Emerging as Kingmakers

Three television exit polls came out as Israel's vote count began, and none of them produced a government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud looks to be the largest single party. A bloc of opposition parties led by Gadi Eisenkot holds a narrow edge in two of the three projections. In none of them does either side come near the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset.

Channel 12 projects 52 seats for the opposition bloc and 50 for Netanyahu's bloc, with Arab-led parties at 18. In its numbers Likud takes 24 seats and Eisenkot's Yashar party 22. Naftali Bennett's B'Yachad party is at 12 and the Joint List at 11. The Democrats and Yisrael Beiteinu each have nine, Shas has eight, Ra'am and United Torah Judaism seven each, and Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism six each.

Channel 13 gives the opposition a slightly wider lead, 53 seats to Netanyahu's 50, with Arab-led parties at 17 combined. It puts Likud at 25 seats, Yashar at 23, B'Yachad at 14 and the Joint List at 10. The Democrats are at nine, and Yisrael Beiteinu, Ra'am and United Torah Judaism at seven each. Shas, Otzma Yehudit and the combined Religious Zionism and Zehut lists are at six each. The same poll says Winter, Yaron Zelekha and Leitner fall below the electoral threshold and would not enter the Knesset.

The i24 poll reverses the order. It gives Netanyahu's bloc 55 seats, the Eisenkot-led bloc 49 and Arab parties 16. Even there, Netanyahu's camp is six seats short of 61, and the opposition would be further away without outside support. No poll shows either camp able to govern alone.

That leaves the Arab-led parties, projected at between 16 and 18 seats across the three polls, with potentially decisive weight in coalition talks. Their support may not translate into a governing majority, though. Opposition parties have generally been reluctant to bring Arab-led parties into a governing coalition, which complicates any effort to build a government without Netanyahu.

Both men could claim a path to forming a government. Netanyahu leads the largest single party in the Channel 12 and 13 projections, while Eisenkot heads the larger bloc in both. Long negotiations are a possible result. If neither side succeeds, Israel could face another election, with Netanyahu staying on as caretaker prime minister. The country already went through five rounds of voting between 2019 and 2022.

All of this is provisional. The Central Elections Committee has started counting ballots, and the official distribution of seats may differ from the exit polls. The final count will show whether the gap between the blocs holds, and how much leverage the Arab-led parties actually have.