Middle East Insider · Special Edition · Wednesday, October 28, 2026

The Results

Good evening. A short special edition on the result as it stands tonight. First the figures and what is still to be opened; then the night’s speeches, Likud’s theft claim and President Herzog’s timetable; then Washington and the markets; then the Forum’s own work on the vote.

The exit polls reversed overnight and the committee’s figures confirmed it; Netanyahu’s bloc is eight seats short of a majority and the opposition thirteen; the ballots of soldiers, diplomats and prisoners are added tomorrow.

The Central Elections Committee’s partial result gives Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc 53 seats, the bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot, the former army chief, 48 and the two Arab lists 19. At 10:52 p.m. the committee said it had processed 89.8 percent of the vote and that the seats had not moved since its afternoon figures, which the Times of Israel reported at 85.6 percent. Sixty-one are needed. Three new lists fell under the 3.25 percent threshold: Yoaz Hendel’s Reservists at 2.6 percent, Ofer Winter’s People of Israel at 1.6 and Charedi Public at 0.2.

At 10 p.m. last night Kan, the public broadcaster, and Channels 12 and 13 all had the opposition ahead, and by 11:11 p.m. all three gave Eisenkot’s bloc 52 seats to Netanyahu’s 50. By 1:11 a.m. Channel 13 had the blocs level at 51, and at 2:17 a.m. Channel 12 put Netanyahu’s bloc at 52, the opposition at 49 and Likud at 27. The committee’s figures at 4 a.m., from a quarter of the boxes, gave Netanyahu’s bloc 63; the lead fell through the morning as the Arab parties’ seats rose from 8 to 19, to 57 at 42 percent, 54 at 72 and 53 from 85.6 on. Ra’am, the Islamist Arab party, sat below the threshold at 3.2 percent in the 4 a.m. figures and holds 7 seats tonight.

Turnout at the 10 p.m. close was 77.7 percent, 5,695,682 voters, up seven points on 2022 and the highest since 1999; Sakhnin, an Arab city in the Galilee, voted at 86.8 percent and Tel Aviv at 65.4. Among soldiers, who voted at more than 890 stations including posts in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, it was 79.9 percent, six points above 2022. The Arab parties’ 19 seats compare with 10 in the outgoing Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and a previous high of 15 in 2020.

What remains are the double envelopes: the ballots of soldiers, police, diplomats, prisoners and hospital patients, cast away from their home stations and opened last, after a check that no one voted twice. The committee cut its estimate of them today to between 430,000 and 480,000, worth about 12 seats at roughly 40,000 votes a seat, with the official result due on November 4; their opening begins at 1 a.m. and should be finished by tomorrow evening. In 2022 they moved one seat, from United Torah Judaism to Yisrael Beytenu.

Party seats are the committee’s 2:32 p.m. figures as reported by the Times of Israel, unchanged in its 10:52 p.m. update; the exit poll is Channel 12’s first at 10 p.m., as tabulated by Israel Hayom. Netanyahu’s bloc won 64 seats in 2022 and held 68 in the outgoing Knesset.

The committee refused the extra hour, the opposition declared victory on election night, Netanyahu asserted a Zionist majority after 3 a.m., and this evening Likud said the election was stolen.

The committee’s presidium, under its chairman, Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, turned down the request from Likud, Shas, Otzma Yehudit and Ofer Winter’s People of Israel to extend voting hours at about 8:30 p.m., ruling that “as things stand, there is no justification for extending the voting hours”; the committee had already reported that 4,892,106 citizens voted by 6 p.m., more than in all of 2022. The polls closed at 10.

Half an hour later Eisenkot told his supporters in Tel Aviv, “The public voted for change. The coalition of failure has lost the people’s trust.” At about 1 a.m. the former prime minister Naftali Bennett said, “Netanyahu has lost and the October 7th Government is going home!” Aryeh Deri, the chairman of Shas, the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party, did not speak; his statement said the exit polls “show significant discrepancies, so we will have to wait for the actual results.”

Netanyahu spoke after 3 a.m. at Likud’s headquarters in Jerusalem. “Likud is the biggest party in Israel,” he said; “the right-wing bloc has a clear, decisive majority among the Zionist public”; “we must form a strong, national, right-wing government”; and “It is simply forbidden to endanger Israel and form a government that rests on anti-Zionist Arab parties.” In his speech Eisenkot had already called him “a caretaker prime minister, without a mandate and without the public’s confidence,” and had told the heads of the security services, “Stand firm against any attempt to pressure you.” This afternoon Defense Minister Israel Katz called that “an undemocratic and detached statement.”

Late this afternoon Likud said, “The elections in Israel were stolen by Arab parties that support terror and the elimination of the Jewish state,” alleged bribery, threats, violence, forgeries and illegal voter software, demanded an investigation by the police and the Shin Bet, the domestic security agency, and said it would hand over “hundreds of testimonies” and “thousands of envelopes with cash and Ra’am slips.” Talal al-Krenawi, the mayor of Rahat, the Bedouin city, called the claim “lies and falsehoods” and “incitement against the Bedouins.” By 6:41 p.m. the committee had answered that it had opened the election-integrity review it runs “as it does in every election,” that its acting director general, Dean Livne, had invited each list on October 25 to name the stations it wanted examined, and that “The committee received Likud’s request and is reviewing it as part of this operation.”

Herzog receives the official result next week, the new Knesset is sworn in by November 10, and Jerusalem is discussing three paths, none of them short.

President Isaac Herzog said today that he will receive the official result from Justice Sohlberg next week and then hear every faction: “We must do everything we can, certainly after yesterday, to avoid another round of elections. So I expect everyone who comes here to come with an open mind.” The leader he names gets 28 days and a 14-day extension on request; a second nominee gets 28 days without one; after that 61 members can name a candidate with 14 days, and failing that Israel votes again. The new Knesset is sworn in by November 10, and Ynet reports that Yashar, Yisrael Beytenu and B’Yachad have discussed a joint bid that day to replace the speaker, Amir Ohana, which would need the Arab parties’ votes, and that Netanyahu’s associates intend to block it.

The Times of Israel’s survey of the paths gives three. First, a government of the opposition parties resting on the Arab lists, 67 seats with their support from outside, which every opposition party except the Democrats pledged before the vote not to form; Ra’am has offered to work with the bloc, and Avigdor Liberman of Yisrael Beytenu has refused any such arrangement. Yair Golan, the Democrats’ leader, wrote today, on the morning’s figures, “The change bloc has an Israeli majority: 65 against 55,” and Yousef Jabareen, who leads the Joint List, the other Arab slate, said anyone offering “a substantive and genuine alternative” to Netanyahu’s government will “have to talk to us.” Second, a unity government: Netanyahu said “Anyone who wants is welcome to join,” without a rotation; Eisenkot vowed before the vote not to serve under him even in one; and Itamar Ben Gvir, the national security minister, called a government with Eisenkot “a terrible mistake.” Third, another election. A minority government with Ra’am inside and the Joint List outside is the fourth path some describe, on the precedent of 1993. At 10:15 p.m. Netanyahu told Ben Gvir and Smotrich, Channel 14 reported, “We are together and we are staying together,” and at 10:51 Eisenkot wrote that the voters had “expressed no confidence in the government of October 7 and draft evasion.”

Through all of it Netanyahu governs as caretaker. Or Asher of the Tachlith Institute says “a caretaker prime minister can legally take Israel to war, including against Iran”; Guy Lurie of the Israel Democracy Institute says such a government “has a duty of restraint.”

President Trump said a tie “is sort of considered a win,” his ambassador named the two men who know whether Iran is next, and the shekel headed for its worst day in 16 months.

President Trump posted overnight, quoting words he attributed to one Irving C. Schwartz, that “rather than a decisive defeat for a Great Prime Minister, it looks like a big come-from-behind stalemate, or even a WIN for Netanyahu. It all took place AFTER the Endorsement by President Trump, who only wants what is good for the Middle East, Israel, and the United States of America!” To reporters at Joint Base Andrews he said, “It might be winning or tie. The tie is sort of considered a win in that case because it’s a big chess match.” Asked about strikes on Iran after the midterms, he said, “I can’t tell you that certainly, but anything’s possible.” He told Axios, “I heard my endorsement made a big difference for Bibi,” and, on pressing for a unity government under Netanyahu, “I will take a look.”

Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said on Newsmax that “there are only two people on the planet who actually know if something is going to happen, and if so, when, and that’s President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu.” Reuters reports that administration officials have privately voiced frustration at what they see as Netanyahu’s intransigence in insisting that Hamas disarm first, and that a Democratic Congress after the November 3 midterms could mean pressure to curb aid and weapons supplies. Tonight the Wall Street Journal reported that Vice President Vance has written to Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, to restart talks; Reuters could not confirm it.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, wrote that the “devastating impact on int’l markets of any Israel-instigated military misadventure in Persian Gulf region remains major concern for both gas suppliers and consumers,” after his ministry’s spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, said on Monday that the outcome “makes no difference” to Tehran. Hezbollah’s leader, Naim Qassem, called the result a form of defeat for Israel, Lebanon’s LBCI reported.

The shekel fell about 2 percent to 3.12 to the dollar, heading for its worst day in 16 months, Reuters reported. By mid-afternoon the TA-35 index was down 2.85 percent and the TA-125 3.3 percent, construction shares had lost about 8 percent and the ten-year government yield had risen to about 4.1 percent.

I draw three conclusions. First, on the figures so far, eleven seats left Netanyahu’s bloc against 2022, from 64 to 53; two went to the Jewish-led opposition and nine to the Arab parties. The parties that pledged never to sit with those lists now cannot govern without them, and the prime minister who warned against an Arab government is eight seats from a majority that only his opponents can supply. Second, a party alleging theft owes the elections committee its evidence, and the public deserves the findings in full; Likud raised the charge before the first box was opened and filed its complaint after the result, and the review will say what it is worth. Third, the American interest is a government in Jerusalem able to decide, and soon. President Trump’s choice on Iran comes after November 3; a caretaker who can legally go to war but holds no mandate is the weakest partner for that decision, and Washington should want the talks short, whoever wins them.

Election Night Special, Israel Votes, with Gregg Roman and Alex Selsky (Oct 27): Alex Selsky and I went live at 10 p.m. with the exit polls. His three readings of the night stand: nobody reaches 61 without the Arab parties, their vote grew, and the three new lists all failed the threshold. The recording is on the Forum’s YouTube channel.

Israel Insider, Alex Selsky hosts the Forum’s weekly program on the result (Oct 28): Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern, 9 p.m. in Israel, on Zoom.

MEF Reports, Fracturing the Iranian Regime (Oct 28): Seth D. Kaplan argues that eight months of war have weakened Iran’s military but not the regime, and that political change depends on breaking apart the coalition around the Revolutionary Guards that holds it together.

The Forum’s poll of polls closed its average at 53 seats for Netanyahu’s bloc, 53 for the opposition and 14 for the Arab parties; the first was right and the other two were five off in opposite directions. Yesterday’s edition, Israel Votes, carried election day as it happened, and Sunday’s Long View made the case for a constitution.

Corrections Desk. On the Forum’s broadcast last night I said, on the exit polls’ figures, that Netanyahu had lost the ability to form a coalition with himself as prime minister for the foreseeable future. The committee’s figures reversed the exit polls by morning, and that judgment is withdrawn; the result above stands in its place.

If this edition told you something the morning’s headlines did not, forward it to one person who will follow the coalition talks.

Reply with the one question about the coalition talks you want answered in tomorrow’s edition.