Written By | International News Agencies
Israel is a parliamentary democracy in which voters choose party lists under proportional representation
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Middle East Politics
Overview
Israel's election on October 27 is being framed by both sides as a referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu, the country's longest-serving prime minister, and on the way he has led the country through the war that followed Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack and the confrontations with Iran and its allies since. On Thursday, the first ballots were cast as voting opened at Israel's diplomatic missions abroad. With less than two weeks remaining, polls suggest that neither Netanyahu's bloc nor the opposition led by former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot has a clear path to the 61 seats needed to form a government in the 120-seat Knesset.
That prospect, a repeat of the inconclusive contests that dominated Israeli politics between 2019 and 2022, is what makes the final stretch so tense. The result may be decided less by persuading undecided voters than by turnout, by whether small parties clear the electoral threshold, and by whether anyone is willing to rely on Arab-party votes to govern.
Background: How Israel Votes and Why This Contest Matters
Israel is a parliamentary democracy in which voters choose party lists under proportional representation. No party has ever won a majority outright, so the prime minister is the candidate who can assemble a coalition of at least 61 seats. Parties must win about 3.25 percent of the vote, roughly four seats, to enter the Knesset. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that 38 parties are running but no more than 15 are expected to clear the bar. Votes for parties that miss the threshold are effectively wasted, a fact that shapes strategy on both sides.
This is the first national election since the October 7 attack and the wars that followed. Fox News, quoting analysts, describes strong voter anger over responsibility for the attack and over the social and economic costs of the continuing conflict. The coverage reviewed for this report did not explain what triggered the early vote, and this document does not speculate. Analyst Eylon Levy told Fox that the likeliest outcome is deadlock, with Netanyahu remaining as caretaker prime minister until a new government is sworn in.
Netanyahu, in the assessment of political scientist Gayil Talshir quoted by JTA, enters the race in his weakest position in a decade in terms of the parties running. In 2022 he pushed Religious Zionism, led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and Otzma Yehudit, led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, to merge so that their votes would not be lost. This time they are running separately, along with a third right-wing list, Amcha Yisrael, led by retired Brigadier General Ofer Winter.
Key Developments: The Polls
The numbers vary by pollster, which is itself part of the story. A Channel 12 poll conducted by the Midgam Institute and published on Monday, October 13, with 509 respondents and a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points, gave Eisenkot's new Yashar party 23 seats, making it the largest, with Likud on 20. The Bennett-Lapid joint slate, listed as Together, had 13, while the Democrats and Yisrael Beiteinu each had 9. On the right and religious side, Otzma Yehudit and Shas each had 8, United Torah Judaism 7 and Religious Zionism 6. The two Arab lists, the Joint List and the United Arab List, had 8 and 5. The Reservists party of Yoaz Hendel and Yaron Zelekha reached 4, while Amcha Yisrael and Benny Gantz's Blue and White fell below the threshold at 1.8 and 0.9 percent respectively.
In that survey the Eisenkot bloc held at 54 seats, the Netanyahu bloc stood at 49, and Arab parties combined had 13. Haaretz reported that parties opposed to Netanyahu totaled 67, but that some opposition parties refuse to cooperate with Arab parties, so the Eisenkot bloc lacks a governing majority on its own. A Times of Israel headline likewise said the anti-Netanyahu bloc regained the lead, with Yashar first and Likud second.
Other readings are less favorable to the opposition. JTA reports that most polls show Netanyahu's bloc at about 52 to 53 seats, well short of 61, while the opposition bloc has fallen from roughly 58 or 59 seats to about 52 or 53 in recent weeks. The discrepancy with Channel 12's numbers underscores the uncertainty. Different pollsters also disagree about how many seats go to Arab parties, which JTA puts at about 14 combined versus Channel 12's 13. Note, too, that Haaretz's summary refers to a 60-seat majority, whereas the standard threshold in a 120-seat Knesset is 61.
The Right's Fragmentation and the Arab Vote
The most important structural feature of the race is the fragmentation of the right. Religious Zionism polls at about 5 or 6 seats but has spent considerable time recently below the threshold, and Winter's Amcha Yisrael polls at 4 or 5 in some surveys but failed to cross it in the Channel 12 polls. Pollster Shmuel Rosner notes that the anti-Netanyahu camp has no party at serious risk of missing the threshold, while the Netanyahu bloc has at least one and possibly two. Every wasted right-wing vote shrinks the pool from which Netanyahu can build a majority.
This explains the intensity of the Likud campaign around Arab voters. Likud and Religious Zionism plan to station about 2,000 activists at polling stations in Arab communities, citing fraud concerns, even though Central Elections Committee Director General Dean Livne has said there is no widespread fraud in Israel. Likud is also attacking Eisenkot over the prospect of relying on Arab parties. Eisenkot says no Arab party currently meets his criteria for a coalition. Yair Lapid and Avigdor Lieberman have ruled out repeating the 2021 arrangement that included the Islamist Ra'am party.
Arab turnout could nonetheless be decisive. The Joint List, a merger of three Arab parties, may energize voters, though the leader of its Balad component withdrew late last month after the Supreme Court signaled his candidacy would be disqualified. Ra'am leader Mansour Abbas said in August that replacing Netanyahu's government was his top priority, and Joint List chairman Youssef Jabareen said his party would support any government ending Netanyahu's rule, subject to unspecified conditions. Talshir suggests that in a deadlock one scenario could be an Eisenkot-led minority government backed by Ra'am from outside the coalition, a possibility that candidates currently deny they will pursue.
Campaign Issues: Gaza, Iran, the Courts
On Gaza, Eisenkot pledged that Hamas will no longer rule the Strip within 18 months of his taking office as prime minister, and said of Netanyahu: "As long as Benjamin Netanyahu remains in power, Hamas will remain in power." The Israeli military says it demolished a 1.5-kilometer Hamas tunnel that crossed the so-called Yellow Line into Israeli-held territory. Based on IDF figures from June, Hamas controls roughly a third of Gaza while Israel holds more than 60 percent. A Palestinian poll conducted October 7 to 11 among 1,400 respondents found support for Hamas at 19 percent, down from 24 percent in August and 35 percent in August 2025, with 53 percent backing a two-state solution.
Iran dominates the security debate. Commentator Gadi Taub calls a possible rebuilding of Iran's nuclear program, with Russian and Chinese backing, an existential danger and the decisive issue for many voters. Reports indicate that Netanyahu pressed Trump to renew fighting with Iran before the Israeli and U.S. elections, and Netanyahu has said Iran's regime "must go," though he doubted it would fall before the vote. President Trump, according to one market brief, has ruled out major U.S. strikes before the November 3 midterms. These reports are not independently confirmed in the material reviewed here.
The judiciary is another flashpoint. Justice Yael Willner was chosen to sit on the Judicial Selection Committee, replacing Daphne Barak-Erez, but the committee is unlikely to convene before a new government forms. A law passed by the outgoing government would let six other committee members appoint Supreme Court justices without the input of the three justices, and opposition parties have vowed to repeal it. Separately, former Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar filed a defamation suit against Netanyahu, citing warnings he says were ignored before October 7.
What Comes Next
Between now and October 27 the story will turn on three variables. The first is turnout, which Rosner expects to hinge more on mobilization than on voters switching sides, with the right facing the harder test. The second is the threshold: whether Religious Zionism, Amcha Yisrael, Blue and White and the Reservists survive will shift the balance by several seats. Gantz has said that if he clears the bar he would seek a unity government including Netanyahu and parts of the opposition.
The third is what happens if neither bloc reaches 61. The president would assign the task of forming a government, coalition talks could drag on for weeks, and Netanyahu would stay on as caretaker. If talks fail entirely, Israel would face yet another election; JTA notes that the 2019 crisis led to five contests. For voters, the choice is stark, but the arithmetic suggests that the night of October 27 may produce less a verdict than the start of a longer negotiation.
