Jewish opposition and Netanyahu bloc still short of majority as 84% of ballots counted
The latest numbers have come in, showing a boost to Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar and Naftali Bennett’s Together party, which brings the anti-Netanyahu ‘Change’ bloc to 49 seats.
The Netanyahu bloc hasn’t changed, at 54 seats, still short of the 61 majority needed for the 120-seat Knesset.
The Palestinian parties’ seats have been revised down to 17 seats.
As we’ve been reporting, if the Jewish Israeli parties agree to partner with the Palestinian parties, they will have the numbers to oust Netanyahu. The opposition together would have 66 seats. But most of the Change bloc had dismissed the idea of a Jew-Arab deal in the lead-up to the election.
Here’s the seat breakdown by party, the Netanyahu bloc is bolded, and the Palestinian Israeli parties italicised.
Updated at 07.15 EDT
Key events
There is precedent for a government coalition involving Palestinian-Israeli parties
While Jewish Israeli and Palestinian Israeli parties teaming up to form a coalition is seen as a political taboo – particularly after anti-Arab sentiment rose in the wake of the October 7 attacks – it is not unprecedented.
The Ra’am leader, Mansour Abbas, in 2021 took his party into a historic coalition government with right-wing leader Naftali Bennett, now part of the opposition bloc.
Netanyahu had also previously started coalition negotiations with Abbas. This election though, he’s resolutely dismissed working with Palestinian Israeli parties, and has run a racist scare campaign claiming it wouldn’t be safe to work with them.
Palestinian Israeli politicians have asserted that they would make a deal with a minority government of Jewish Israeli parties, in order to remove Netanyahu from government.
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Julian Borger
Yesterday my colleague Julian Borger was in Nazareth, the largest Palestinian-majority town in Israel.
Palestinian Israelis make up about 20% of the population, and their turnout this year has been critical to the results we’re seeing, where the two main Palestinian ticket options have secured at least 17 seats between them.
The Joint List, an alliance of Palestinian-Israeli parties, has performed particularly well, securing at least 11 seats in parliament.
The general secretary of Hadash, the leading party in the Joint List coalition, had told Julian that although the Jewish opposition bloc had ruled out working with Palestinian parties, he thought their approach might change after the elections.
“He cannot sit down [in coalition] with Netanyahu, and he won’t want to go back to another round of elections, so we think he can be flexible,” said Amjad Shbita.
Joint List supporters celebrating exit polls last night showing a historic rise in the Palestinian Israeli vote. Photograph: Jamal Awad/Reuters
Manar Hassan, an observer from Ra’am, the other significant Palestinian Israeli party, had also described the turnout as “amazing”.
“It’s never been this strong,” she said, adding that the reasons for the higher level participation were not hard to find.
“We witnessed a catastrophe in Gaza,” Hassan said. “Here we live in fear and anxiety. We need drastic change.”
Updated at 07.33 EDT
Jewish opposition and Netanyahu bloc still short of majority as 84% of ballots counted
The latest numbers have come in, showing a boost to Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar and Naftali Bennett’s Together party, which brings the anti-Netanyahu ‘Change’ bloc to 49 seats.
The Netanyahu bloc hasn’t changed, at 54 seats, still short of the 61 majority needed for the 120-seat Knesset.
The Palestinian parties’ seats have been revised down to 17 seats.
As we’ve been reporting, if the Jewish Israeli parties agree to partner with the Palestinian parties, they will have the numbers to oust Netanyahu. The opposition together would have 66 seats. But most of the Change bloc had dismissed the idea of a Jew-Arab deal in the lead-up to the election.
Here’s the seat breakdown by party, the Netanyahu bloc is bolded, and the Palestinian Israeli parties italicised.
Updated at 07.15 EDT
Leading Palestinian party ready to help ‘oust Netanyahu’The head of the Joint List alliance Yousef Jabareen (fourth from left) celebrates with other party leaders the record turnout by Palestinian Israeli voters, at their headquarters in Nazareth on 27 October 2026. Photograph: Jamal Awad/EPA
The head of the Joint List, the Palestinian Israeli alliance that has performed tremendously this election, has said his party is ready to help remove Netanyahu from office in a partnership with Jewish Israeli opposition parties.
Joint List could be kingmakers, having received the third-largest amount of support so far, behind Netanyahu’s Likud party and Eisenkot’s Yashar. They are an alliance of smaller Arab-majority parties, who have usurped Mansour Abbas’ Ra’am party in galvanising the Palestinian Israeli vote which represents about 20% of the population.
Many voters in this camp have said that they needed to turn out for this election for a chance to get away from the racist, discriminatory policies perpetrated against them under the current far-right Netanyahu government.
This morning, Joint List chairman Yousef Jabareen called for a genuine Jewish-Arab partnership to replace what he said was Netanyahu’s “government of bloodshed.” He also noted that anyone seeking to form an alternative would need to engage with Joint List.
But most of the Jewish opposition parties in the Change bloc anchored by Eisenkot have so far rejected the idea of working with Palestinian Israeli parties.
Eisenkot has said he’d be open to it but only if the Arab parties recognised Israel as a Jewish state and Hamas as an extremist group – conditions which effectively rule out a deal.
The Democrats have been the only ones expressly open to the idea so far, and party leader Golan this morning argued against the racist exclusion of Palestinian Israelis.
Netanyahu meanwhile, has been running a racist scare campaign all election suggesting that the Palestinian parties are “stealing the vote”. During his 3am speech at party HQ he again said he wouldn’t partner with them, describing the idea as treasonous.
Updated at 06.28 EDT
Eisenkot facing stark choice: Make a deal with Palestinian parties or throw Netanyahu a lifelineJulian Borger
The leader of the centre-left Democrats, Yair Golan, has made a point about Zionism that has not had much scrutiny until now.
The Palestinian parties are not the only non-Zionist grouping in the new Knesset. Benjamin Netanyahu’s political bloc relies on Jewish ultra-orthodox, haredim, parties that represent non-Zionists who insist on exemption from military service.
By making an early (and seemingly premature) declaration of a victory for a “Zionist mobilisation government”, the leader of the Jewish “Change” bloc, Gadi Eisenkot, was ruling out potential coalition partners, the surging Arab parties, while Netanyahu had no intention of renouncing his potential haredi partners.
Writing in Haaretz, the commentator Noa Landau, argued Eisenkot had fallen “into the trap Netanyahu laid for him over the course of the election campaign”.
Head of the Joint List alliance Yousef Jabareen (centre) with supporters as the first exit polls are announced at the alliance’s campaign headquarters in Nazareth, Israel, 27 October 2026. Photograph: Jamal Awad/EPA
While projections of the Knesset results have fluctuated significantly over the past hours, the Palestinian Joint List has held firm at 11 projected seats. [As of the 11am figures, it is up to 13 seats.]
It is the projected strength of the rival Ra’am (United Arab List) which has wavered. It no longer seems feasible for the Eisenkot bloc to make a deal exclusively with the Ra’am’s leader, Mansour Abbas, who has shown himself more accomodating towards Zionism, appointing a Zionist Jewish deputy for example.
The choice for Eisenkot will be starker: do a deal with the Joint List, which is far more assertive about Palestinian identity and about the racism that its constituents experience, or throw Netanyahu a political lifeline in the form of new elections or a unity government.
Eisenkot at the Yashar party’s campaign headquarters in Tel Aviv last night Photograph: Paulina Patimer/JNA/ZUMA Press Wire/ShutterstockShare
Updated at 05.54 EDT
Palestinian parties gain 19 seats, positioning them as potential kingmakers
With 70% of the vote (4 million ballots) counted at 11am local time, the base numbers for Netanyahu and Eisenkot’s parties largely haven’t changed but the two Palestinian parties have increased their share.
The Netanyahu bloc now has 54 seats, while the opposition seeking to get him out of office consists of the Eisenkot-led Change bloc with 47 seats and the Palestinian parties with 19 seats.
The Knesset has 120 seats- 61 are needed for a majority.
At the bottom of this post is the current seat breakdown by party – I’ve bolded the Netanyahu bloc.
Netanyahu’s Likud party, while losing support since the last election, has still gained the most number of votes – ahead of Eisenkot’s Yashar. However, critically for Netanyahu, his far-right allies in Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s parties have seen a decline in their support.
Meanwhile the Palestinian Israeli parties, italicised below, have seen a huge gain, particularly for the Joint List, which is an alliance of smaller Arab-majority parties. They have nearly doubled their representation in parliament.
Updated at 07.07 EDT
Golan warns against racist exclusion of Palestinian parties
As the vote count flows in, Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats, issued a strong statement rejecting attempts to frame results as a tie, and warning against the racist exclusion of Palestinian representatives from a future government.
Golan leads the only centre-left party in the Jewish-Israeli opposition bloc. Many of the parties in that anti-Netanyahu ‘Change’ grouping have explicitly ruled out governing with Palestinian Israeli parties.
The unofficial leader of the bloc, Gadi Eisenkot, has laid out conditions for joining his coalition that effectively bar the Arab parties.
This morning Golan says:
double quotation markThere is one resounding lesson from the reality we face: we have no future here unless we stop being afraid. And unless we put an end to racism. We must no longer accept Netanyahu’s racist division between Jewish votes and Arab votes.
The vote of an Israeli citizen casting a ballot in Tira is worth exactly the same as the vote of an Israeli citizen casting a ballot in Givat Shmuel. Not less. Not approximately the same. Exactly the same.
Anyone who tries to erase the votes of Arab citizens is surrendering to Netanyahu and giving up on Israel.
The largest Palestinian-Israeli alliance, the Joint List, is expected to get significantly more seats in the Knesset than the Democrats. With two thirds of votes counted, the Joint List is on track for 12 seats, and the Democrats for 8.
Golan said the clearest message from voters was that Netanyahu’s coalition has lost its majority, and its mandate to rule.
double quotation markI know how to count to 120 [the number of seats in parliament]. 65 is more than 55. That is how Israeli democracy works. Period.
We have a majority. We have a responsibility. And we have an opportunity to form a change government in partnership with Arab citizens of Israel—a government that serves all Israeli citizens.
Updated at 04.47 EDT
It’s worth noting the front page headlines in Israeli media today, printed before dawn so slightly out of date on some of the projections.
But the top headlines for each masthead are notable – with most highlighting the rise in the Palestinian-Israeli parties. The fact that there is no clear government formation had been expected; as we’ve reported, no single political party has ever won an outright majority in Israel’s political history so governments have also been coalitions of multiple parties. The papers did indicate a slight lead among the opposition bloc.
Haaretz front page Photograph: Haaretz
Yedioth Ahronoth:
Eisenkot on His Way to the President
Small Parties Fall Beneath the Electoral Threshold
Surge in Arab Sector Vote
Ma’ariv:
Ha’aretz:
Exit Polls: 70 Seats for Opposition, 18 of Them from Arab Parties
Self-Defensive Democracy
Voter Turnout was 77.7%, Highest Since 1999
Israel Hayom
Updated at 04.42 EDT
We’re expecting a sharper picture of results just after 10am local time, where a majority of votes will be tallied and crucially, key counting from areas supporting Palestinian parties will have come in.
As of 9.16am local time, 65% of the vote had been counted showing the Netanyahu bloc on 56 seats, the Eisenkot-anchored ‘Change’ bloc on 48, and Palestinian Israeli parties with 16.
Updated at 04.16 EDT
Emma Graham-Harrison
Hours after Israel’s polling stations closed, and with more than half of votes counted, several things are clear.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s current coalition has lost its mandate, Palestinian citizens of Israel have secured a key bloc of seats on the back of historic turnout, and the main Jewish-Israeli opposition bloc has no clear path to power without their support.
By 8am Israeli time, partial results put the opposition bloc led by former Israeli military chief Gadi Eisenkot on 49 seats, behind Netanyahu’s coalition at 55 seats. Palestinian-led parties are forecast to secure the remaining 16 seats, but several key towns were yet to report their counts.
A more complete picture is expected by late morning. Exit polls had put Eisenkot in a stronger position, and Israeli political analyst Nadav Eyal said around 6am local time that the pollsters were standing behind their samples.
double quotation markThey haven’t corrected further, and apparently validated their exit polls against the true results at the polling stations. In their view, these will be the final results.”
He noted that samples in Israel have historically been very accurate in forecasting the size of potential coalition blocs, but also that Likud’s strength is often underestimated.
Exit polls also do not capture absentee ballots, although these are fairly restricted under Israel’s voting system. Eligible groups include diplomats, serving soldiers and people medically unable to reach polling stations.
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It’s just after 9am in Tel Aviv where Israelis are grappling with the results of yesterday’s elections, with no clear victor and uncertainty guaranteed at this point.
With 50% of the vote counted, Israeli media report that Netanyahu’s bloc is ahead, with projections he could take 55 seats under the current vote share. The projections put Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition bloc on 49 seats and the Palestinian parties on 16 seats. Sixty-one seats are needed to form a majority to govern in the Knesset, and the final seat projection will probably be updated as more votes are counted.
Exit polls published by Israel’s major TV networks show Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing bloc tied with the opposition grouping led by Gadi Eisenkot on 51 seats each. Earlier exit polls had Eisenkot winning most seats in the Knesset by a slight margin. Israeli exit polls are often revised after publication and are notoriously imprecise, with the final count often swinging by several seats.
Voter turnout surged to the highest level in more than two decades, underscoring the stakes of an election that has been labelled the most important in the country’s history. More than 77% of eligible voters cast a ballot, according to Israel’s central elections committee, about 7 percentage points higher than in 2022.
The Palestinian parties are projected to dramatically increase their representation in the Knesset, with exit polls showing they could win as many as 18 seats, up from 10. Experts have said that if Eisenkot falls short of a majority, as the exit polls suggest, he would be obliged to sit down to talk to the Palestinian groupings, the Joint List and Ra’am, to try to form a government – which could take weeks.
Netanyahu took the stage at a post-election rally in Jerusalem just after 3am, telling his supporters official results will show that “Likud is the largest party in Israel”. He told his supporters that the country must “establish a strong, right-wing national government” – adding that a government that relies on the support of Palestinian parties must not be formed.
Eisenkot told cheering supporters in Tel Aviv that the “Israeli public has voted against Netanyahu’s service as Israel’s prime minister … a worthy leader would have accepted the people’s non-confidence and announced today his retirement from politics.” In his speech, he also warned Netanyahu not to “use Israel’s security” for political ends, playing on fears that the prime minister could use this period of uncertainty to launch a new attack on Iran.
The exit polls were released after a last-ditch effort by Netanyahu and several other parties to keep polling stations open beyond their 10pm deadline was rejected by the Central Elections Committee. The prime minister suggested publicly that efforts were being made by the “left and Arabs” to steal the election, a claim rejected by the committee, which said it had seen no evidence of systematic tampering.
Updated at 03.01 EDT
Turnout among Israeli army personnel was 79.9%, an increase of 6.2% from the 2022 elections, according to the IDF.
In its statement, the IDF said that 809 polling stations were deployed throughout the country’s bases and in combat zones.
Israeli election material is packed in a central logistics centre. Photograph: Jim Hollander/UPI/Shutterstock
Under Israeli electoral law each voter is assigned to a specific polling station and can only vote at that station. However in exceptional circumstances, some voters are allowed to cast their ballot at special polling stations they are not registered at; among those afforded this exception are IDF personnel.
Ballot boxes from these special polling stations are transported directly to the Knesset where they undergo a series of checks before they are counted.