Israelis Head to the Polls in a Election Seen as a Referendum on Netanyahu's Leadership

On Tuesday, October 27, polls open in Israel at 7am local time, and by 10pm that night the country will have cast the first national vote since the Hamas attacks of three years ago. Those attacks set off a chain of events that reshaped Israel and the region around it. The man at the center of the contest is Benjamin Netanyahu, the nation's longest-serving prime minister, who is trying to hold on to power.

The election is effectively a referendum on Netanyahu himself. Much of the campaign has turned on his brand and on whether he has reached what the debate frames as his use-by date. Some challengers are polling strongly, but Israel's coalition structures mean it is far from certain who will lead the country in the coming weeks and months.

There are 38 parties on the ballot, though most will not win enough votes to enter the 120-seat Knesset. Polling is moving around, and most major media outlets run their own numbers. Setting aside right-wing outlets, which are strongly pro-Netanyahu and pro-Likud, most surveys show Yashar emerging as the largest party with 20 to 23 seats. Likud would come second with 19 to 21.

Here the arithmetic gets complicated, which is why Israeli governments are almost always coalitions. The right-wing parties that would naturally gather around Likud are Otzma Yehudit, Religious Zionism, United Torah Judaism, Shas and Amcha Yisrael. Together they add up to between 49 and 51 seats in what is called the Netanyahu bloc. The opposition parties likely to back Yashar and Gadi Eisenkot are Beyachad, The Democrats and Yisrael Beiteinu, and they reach between 52 and 55. Roughly 14 to 19 seats fall to smaller groups, including the Palestinian parties.

Neither bloc reaches the 61 seats needed for an outright majority without support from groups such as The United Arab List or The Joint List. That points to possibly weeks of coalition negotiations with nothing certain. Elected members could also defect to other parties as part of the process, and loyalty is not guaranteed.

The issues driving the vote may surprise outside observers. The wars in Gaza and Lebanon are not expected to have a huge impact, and opposition parties are not promising radical change if elected. Cost of living, a pressure on governments worldwide, is not much of a dial shifter either, even though Israel is one of the most expensive countries to live in within the OECD.

The mechanics are simple. Israel has no electoral districts; it holds a single nationwide vote, and seats are allocated by each party's share of the national result. Voters do not mark a paper. They choose a ballot bearing their party's logo and drop it in the box. There is no early voting, no postal voting except for soldiers, and no voting from overseas, so everyone votes in person, in the country, on the day.

Polls close at 10pm local time, which is 7am AEDT on Wednesday, October 28. Major outlets will publish exit polls around then, likely giving a clearer picture than pre-election surveys. Because the count is relatively simple, an indication of where the parties stand could come within hours. Final results are declared a few days later, but the popular vote will be largely known by then. The harder part, assembling a government, starts after that.