Israel Election Results 2026: No Bloc Wins a Majority

Update, Oct. 31, 2026: The count is complete, and neither bloc reached 61 seats. Netanyahu's bloc won 53, Eisenkot's opposition bloc 48 and Arab parties 19, according to final results the Central Elections Committee published Friday, JNS reported. Likud is the largest party with 27 seats, followed by Eisenkot's Yashar with 21 and B'Yachad with 12, per Globes. The Reservists did not clear the threshold, Ynet reported. Turnout was 77.9%. The committee says the results, subject to minor corrections, go to President Isaac Herzog on Nov. 4, and the new Knesset is scheduled to be sworn in Nov. 10. Our preview from before the vote follows.

Israelis vote on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, in a national election that many in the country describe as the most consequential in its history. It is the first general election since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, which killed about 1,200 people in Israel, according to The Guardian. The vote will decide whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stays in power. U.S. interest is high, in part because President Donald Trump has publicly endorsed Netanyahu, and an Al Jazeera explainer on the vote ranked among Google News' top stories on Oct. 26. This is a nonpartisan guide. If you only need the timing, exit polls land at 4 p.m. ET.

How Israel's system turns election results into a government

Israel uses a national proportional representation system. Voters choose a party list rather than an individual candidate, and seats in the 120-member Knesset are divided according to each list's share of the vote.

• The threshold. A party must win at least 3.25% of the vote to enter the Knesset, Al Jazeera explains. Parties that clear it win at least four seats.
• The majority. A government needs 61 seats. No single party has ever won that many, so Israel has always been governed by coalitions, The Guardian notes.
• Forming a government. After the results, Israel's president invites a party leader to try to assemble a majority coalition.
• The term. The Knesset's term is four years.
• Who votes. About 7.3 million Israeli citizens are eligible to vote, according to Al Jazeera, including about 1.2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, often called Arab citizens.

The Arab-majority parties nearly missed the ballot. Last month, Israel's Central Elections Committee voted to bar the Joint List and Ra'am, but the country's top court quickly reversed that decision, Al Jazeera reported.

The main blocs and parties

The race is largely a contest between two blocs, plus Arab-majority parties that neither bloc has agreed to bring into a coalition.

Netanyahu has led Israel for 19 of the past 30 years and is seeking a new mandate with the endorsement of U.S. President Donald Trump, The Guardian reports. He also faces corruption charges that he has been fighting in court since 2019, Al Jazeera notes. His main rival, Gadi Eisenkot, is a former head of the Israel Defense Forces and a relative political newcomer whose new party's name, Yashar, means "honesty."

What the final polls showed

Israel bans new polls in the final days before an election, so the last surveys came out on Friday, Oct. 23. They disagreed on the details but agreed on the headline: no bloc reached 61 seats.

Sources: i24NEWS and Al Jazeera. The i24NEWS survey of 5,124 adults had a reported margin of error of plus or minus 1.4 percentage points.

The polls also split on the largest single party. i24NEWS had Likud first with 26 seats and Yashar second with 21; Kan had Yashar at 22 and Likud at 20. Both gave the Joint List nine seats and Ra'am five. Kan found that 36% of respondents had not made a final decision on which party to support.

Two small parties could decide it

The Guardian identifies two parties polling near the 3.25% threshold: Amcha Yisrael, led by former general Ofer Winter, who has said he would back Netanyahu, and the Reservists, a party focused on universal military service whose leaders sit between the blocs. i24NEWS had Amcha Yisrael crossing the line with four seats; Kan had it below, at 2.9%. Because a party that crosses the threshold wins at least four seats, a fraction of a percentage point could swing coalition math.

The issues voters are weighing

According to both outlets, the campaign has focused on:

• Security after two years of conflict on several fronts, including Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.
• Accountability for Oct. 7. Opposition parties have promised a state commission of inquiry into the security failures before the attacks.
• Military service. Most opposition parties have pledged to end the draft exemption for ultra-Orthodox men, while ultra-Orthodox parties in Netanyahu's coalition want to keep it.
• The courts and democratic institutions, after the governing coalition's efforts to change the judiciary.
• The cost of living and Israel's international standing.

What's next

1. Tuesday afternoon in the U.S. Exit polls are released at 10 p.m. Israel time (4 p.m. ET, 1 p.m. PT), according to i24NEWS and The Guardian.
2. Overnight counting. The first real vote counts usually appear in the early hours of Wednesday in Israel. If small parties are hovering at the threshold, The Guardian says, counting could take more than a day.
3. Coalition talks. The president consults party leaders and invites one to try to form a government. If no one can reach 61, Al Jazeera notes the options include a minority government that relies on outside support or another election. A Kan poll found voters split almost evenly among a unity government, a repeat election and a minority government.

Before the vote: what the polls said

The final polls disagreed on almost everything except the part that mattered: neither Netanyahu's bloc nor Eisenkot's had a clear path to 61 seats. That made a fraction of a point for Amcha Yisrael or the Reservists nearly as important as the race at the top.

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