Israel election polls leave Netanyahu and his rivals short of a majority

Benjamin Netanyahu faces an uncertain contest in Israel’s October 27 election: a poll cited in Thursday’s Guardian report puts both his bloc and the Jewish parties opposing him short of the 61 seats needed to govern. The vote will choose a new Knesset, but the projections leave open who could assemble a government afterward.

The Channel 13 poll, published the previous week and cited by the Guardian, projected 51 seats for Netanyahu’s bloc and 52 for Jewish parties opposed to him. Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party led that survey with 22 seats, against 18 for Netanyahu’s Likud. Those figures describe one poll, not an election result. Other surveys may produce different seat estimates, and a lead among parties opposed to Netanyahu does not by itself give them a governing majority.

Why the opposition’s lead may not produce a government

Eisenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, is a leading challenger, but parties opposed to Netanyahu have not settled how they would govern together. Le Monde reported in September that Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman retained ambitions to lead a future government even as Eisenkot led the opposition’s internal contest in polling. It reported that Eisenkot warned the lack of agreed rules for choosing a prime ministerial candidate could damage their chances.

The question is about seats as well as leadership. The Guardian reported that parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel were projected to hold a potentially decisive 12 seats. Eisenkot has ruled out including those parties in a governing coalition, according to the Guardian, although they could potentially support a minority government from outside it. Le Monde reported that Lieberman opposes even a minority government dependent on such outside support. Those positions leave the arithmetic of an alternative government unresolved.

Security, conscription and living costs divide voters

In interviews in Jerusalem, Guardian reporters found voters giving sharply different reasons for their choices. Some voiced firm support for Netanyahu and said he should continue Israel’s wars. Others cited accountability for the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, the cost of living, military conscription or the need for stronger representation of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Those interviews illustrate competing concerns; they do not measure how the country as a whole will vote.

Conscription has become a particularly difficult issue for the governing coalition. The Guardian reported that Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that there was no legal basis to continue the broad exemption for Haredi men studying in religious seminaries. The dispute has since fuelled protests and political pressure. Among the voters the newspaper interviewed, one ultra-Orthodox student who had completed military service said he expected younger people to defy their rabbis’ voting guidance because of anger over the issue.

The Jewish People Policy Institute’s September survey found that 40% of Israelis called this the most important election in the country’s history, up from 33% in February. Another 41% called it especially important. When asked which issue would be decisive in their vote, 31% chose security, the most common answer. The institute reported different priorities across political groups: security and relations between government and judiciary were prominent on the right, while unity stood out in the center.

The same survey underlines why a national headline figure cannot describe every voter’s concerns. The institute found that management of the economy ranked second among Arab Israeli respondents, while only 5% of Jewish Israeli respondents named it as their decisive issue. Its question about who was best suited to be prime minister gave Netanyahu 36%, Eisenkot 29%, Bennett 13% and Lieberman 4%. None of those candidates received a majority in that survey question, which measures stated preference rather than the eventual distribution of Knesset seats.

What happens after the October 27 vote

The election will decide the composition of the 120-seat Knesset. If no group reaches 61 seats, parties will have to negotiate for support to form a government. Le Monde reported that those negotiations could last for months. The present polls therefore cannot answer who will become prime minister, whether opposition parties can agree on a leader, or whether Arab parties will be able to play the role some projections assign them.

For now, the clearest picture is of a close contest with more than one obstacle between a seat projection and a government. The Guardian’s poll numbers leave both main blocs below a majority; the reported opposition divisions and the pending court challenge leave important routes to a coalition unsettled. Voters will determine the seats on October 27, while the parties’ choices afterward will determine whether Netanyahu remains in office.