Israeli Exit Polls Show Deadlock, Dealing Netanyahu an Apparent Setback in Wartime Vote

Israel's first election since the October 7, 2023 attacks ended Tuesday night without a clear winner. Exit polls from two of the country's three major television networks gave Gadi Eisenkot's opposition bloc a narrow lead over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's camp. Channel 13 showed the two sides level at 51 seats each. None of the projections gave either camp the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset.

If the projections hold, the outcome is a major setback for Netanyahu's coalition, which went into the vote with 68 seats. The deadlock could still let Israel's longest-serving prime minister stay on as caretaker while coalition negotiations play out. Final results could take days. No single party has ever won 61 seats outright, so coalitions are the norm, and smaller parties can become kingmakers.

Turnout was 77.7%, according to the Central Elections Committee. That is the highest in more than two decades and about 7 percentage points above 2022. Within Netanyahu's bloc, the far-right religious parties led by Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich were projected to take a combined 13 seats. Arab parties outside both main blocs could hold the balance of power. But Eisenkot, a former military chief who leads the Yashar party, has all but ruled out forming a government with them, which complicates his route to power even in the polls where his bloc finishes ahead.

Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, called the polls a major defeat for Netanyahu's coalition, which was projected far below its outgoing strength. He cautioned, though, that Eisenkot had not emerged as a clear winner and that much could change as votes were counted. Opposition leader Yair Lapid was less restrained. He said the Netanyahu bloc had suffered a crushing defeat, a total collapse, and that the public had told them to go home.

Eisenkot, 66, lost a son and two nephews in the Gaza war. He entered politics only four years ago, joined Netanyahu's war cabinet after the 2023 attack, and quit eight months later, criticising the prime minister's leadership. He stresses his security credentials while positioning himself as a centrist at home. He offers a break with Netanyahu and his far-right allies, but not with the hardline security approach that has deepened since 2023: he opposes Palestinian statehood and says Hamas's military wing must be destroyed or dismantled. He argues Israel's response was a failure because Hamas remains in charge of Gaza. According to Gaza health authorities, that war has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians.

Yair Golan, who leads the Democrats party, told supporters at a rally after polls closed that the nation had given them a sacred duty to turn trust into action and to fortify democracy. At the Joint List's headquarters in Nazareth, an alliance of several Arab parties, the room erupted in whistles and applause when the exit polls came out. It was a historic night for turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel. Candidate Faten Gattas told the crowd they refuse the occupation and racism and will remain. Candidates hoped high Arab participation could help keep Netanyahu's coalition, the most far-right in Israel's history, from returning to power.

Voters weighed the trauma of October 7, when Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostage, and the wars with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran that followed. Netanyahu was criticised for the country's biggest security failure. He argued he had made Israel and the world safer by assassinating top leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. He campaigned on an endorsement from US President Donald Trump, his ally in the war against Iran.

Netanyahu, 77, has been prime minister for nearly 19 of the past 30 years and has repeatedly survived political crises. His opponents have removed him only once since 2009, after four inconclusive elections in two years, and he was back eighteen months later. He entered this vote facing corruption charges, which he denies, and criticism over the intelligence failures that preceded the 2023 attack. As the count continues, the question is whether either bloc can assemble 61 seats, and what role the Arab parties and smaller factions play in that arithmetic.