Israeli Exit Polls Show Deadlock, Dealing Setback to Netanyahu as Eisenkot Bloc Leads

Long lines formed outside polling stations across Israel on Tuesday, and by the time voting closed the exit polls had produced a result that settled very little. Israel's first election since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, and the wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran that followed, appeared to end in deadlock. The Central Elections Committee put turnout at 77.7%, the highest in more than two decades and about 7 percentage points above the 2022 vote.

Israel's three major networks updated their exit polls to give the bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot a two-seat edge, 52 to 50, over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud-led camp. The remaining 18 seats of the 120-seat Knesset went to unaligned Arab parties. Eisenkot, who leads the Yashar party, has all but ruled out governing with them, which complicates his route to a majority despite the lead. Some outlets disagreed sharply: Channel 14, which is pro-Netanyahu, projected that Netanyahu and his parties would win 60 seats together.

Final results could take days. No single party has ever won 61 seats in the Knesset, so coalitions are the norm, and Israel's fragmented system leaves smaller parties positioned as potential kingmakers. A stalemate could also help Netanyahu, since he could stay on as caretaker prime minister while parties try to build a coalition.

Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, called the exit polls a major defeat for Netanyahu's coalition, which held 68 seats in the outgoing Knesset and was shown falling to about 50. He stopped short of calling Eisenkot a clear winner, and warned that much could change as votes were counted. If final numbers mirrored the polls, he said, Eisenkot could try to form a minority government that would push Netanyahu out, even if it lasted only until another election.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid was blunt, saying the Netanyahu bloc had suffered a crushing defeat and that the public had told it to go home. Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats party, told a rally that voters had given his side a sacred duty to strengthen democracy. At the Joint List headquarters in Nazareth, the alliance of Arab parties erupted in whistles and applause when the polls came out, on a historic night for turnout among Palestinian citizens of Israel. Candidate Faten Gattas said they refuse occupation and racism and will remain. Candidates hoped high Arab participation would help keep Netanyahu's coalition, the most far-right in Israel's history, from returning.

Eisenkot, 66, is a hawkish former military chief who lost a son and two nephews in the Gaza war. He entered politics four years ago, joined Netanyahu's war cabinet after the 2023 attack, and quit eight months later, criticising the prime minister's leadership. He offers a break from Netanyahu and his far-right allies, but not from hardline security policy: he opposes Palestinian statehood and says Hamas's military wing must be destroyed or dismantled. He calls the war a failure because Hamas remains in charge of Gaza, where Gaza health authorities say more than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed.

Netanyahu, 77, has been prime minister for nearly 19 of the past 30 years. He entered the race facing corruption charges, which he denies, and criticism over the intelligence failures that let the October 7 attackers kill 1,200 people and seize 251 hostages. He argued that he made Israel and the world safer by assassinating top Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian leaders, and he campaigned on an endorsement from President Donald Trump, his ally in the war against Iran.

His opponents have removed him only once since 2009, after four inconclusive elections in two years, and he returned eighteen months later. The count, and the coalition bargaining after it, will show whether this deadlock follows that pattern.