JERUSALEM — Israelis appear to have handed a rebuke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in national elections, but what’s next is uncertain as exit polls suggest there’s no clear winner and no obvious path to a governing majority.
The election was widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu, the country’s longest-serving prime minister, who gave a defiant speech to his supporters just after 3 a.m. on Wednesday in Jerusalem.
His party, Likud, appears to have gotten the most votes. But the exit polls by major Israeli TV stations indicate that support for his religious-national coalition dropped significantly.
The exit polls suggested his opponents — led by Netanyahu’s chief rival, Gadi Eisenkot, who also rallied exuberant supporters in Tel Aviv early on Wednesday — could secure a solid majority in the next parliament. But whether those disparate parties, which include Arab-led parties, can form a government is uncertain. It would likely take weeks of haggling or possibly new elections.
Here are some key points to know on Wednesday morning, hours after the polls closed in Israel.
Exit polls suggest no clear winner and complex power-jockeying ahead
In Israel, voters choose not individuals but parties. Since no party has ever captured a parliamentary majority on its own, party leaders must agree to come together in a governing coalition.
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Exit polls indicate that Netanyahu’s bloc of supporters won about 51 seats in parliament, approximately the same as the bloc led by Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff. That would leave each side well below the 61 seats needed to form a government with a parliamentary majority.
The exit polls suggested that Arab-led parties captured the remaining 19 seats.
With just under a third of the ballots counted early on Wednesday morning, Israel’s Central Elections Committee reported 22.02% of the vote went to Likud, the party led by Netanyahu, and 15.46% to Eisenkot’s Yashar party. The count does not indicate how many seats each party will win in the parliament.
Arab parties could play a key role in next coalition
Final official results aren’t expected until later this week and they may vary from the exit polls, which, like all surveys, are subject to potential error.
If the Arab parties do as well as the exit polls suggest, they could play a decisive role in selecting Israel’s next prime minister.
In his election night speech, Netanyahu repeated his refusal to create a government relying on Arab parties. Eisenkot has signaled he is ready to work with them under certain conditions, but that could risk alienating some of his partners.
Campaigns gave short shrift to Palestinian issues
Israelis are largely opposed to a Palestinian state. No major candidate advocated a return to the long-moribund peace process.
Even Mansour Abbas, a Palestinian Arab politician who leads Ra’am, the first Arab-led party to join a governing coalition in 2021, focused his campaign on concerns about crime in Arab communities.
As exit polls were shown on a screen at an Abbas election night event in Sakhnin, an Arab city in northern Israel, supporters of the small Arab-led party Ra’am erupted in celebration.
Enduring impact of Oct. 7 attacks reflected in election
This election was held against the background of the enduring trauma of the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, when militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 others, and the ensuing wars in Gaza and beyond.
The deadliest day in Israel’s history featured prominently in the campaigns. Israelis have focused on the security failures surrounding Oct. 7 and the enormous burden on their society, rather than on the humanitarian situation in war-devastated Gaza.
Netanyahu has rejected an investigation into Oct. 7 and blamed the army for the failures that day. His supporters say he led the country back from that difficult day and scored important achievements in wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.
Netanyahu’s opponents said he should be held accountable for the security failures that occurred on his watch and have demanded a commission of inquiry.
Among Jewish Israelis, there’s a religious divide over military service
The country has also been deeply divided by exemptions from military service granted to ultra-Orthodox males. These exemptions are especially contentious after three years of wars.
Netanyahu’s governing coalitions have long relied on ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties that have demanded these exemptions remain in place.
Eisenkot — who lost his son and two nephews to combat in Gaza — has vowed to end the de facto exemptions. He repeated that promise speaking to supporters on Wednesday morning.
The exit polls, which also indicated a drop in support for ultra-Orthodox parties, signaled voter unhappiness over these exemptions.
High voter turnout throughout the day and across the country
The final update from Israel’s Central Elections Committee put voter turnout at 77.7% of eligible voters as polls closed Tuesday night.
That’s the highest turnout since 1999, and just over seven percentage points higher than in the previous election in 2022, reflecting the high stakes of the election.