ISRAELI EXIT POLLS PROJECT NO MAJORITY

Exit polls from Israel’s election on Tuesday projected no majority for either Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc or the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot. The polls projected 50 seats for Netanyahu’s bloc and 52 or 53 for Eisenkot’s, short of the 61 needed to form a majority government. They projected a combined 18 seats for Arab parties. Polling stations closed at 10pm local time. The projections came from interviews with voters after they cast their ballots.

The vote was Israel’s first national election since the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023 and the conflicts that followed. Eisenkot leads the Yashar party, which heads the opposition grouping known as the “change bloc”. Netanyahu’s Likud party leads the governing coalition. The Central Elections Committee reported turnout of 74.3 per cent by 8pm, compared with 70.63 per cent in the 2022 election. It rejected a Likud request to extend voting hours.

The Central Elections Committee also dismissed allegations of voting irregularities raised by the main parties, saying it had found no evidence of systematic ballot-paper tampering. A man was arrested in Tel Aviv after allegedly attempting to attack Democratic Party leader Yair Golan with a knife. Preliminary results are expected on Wednesday and a final tally on Friday. Officials are due to publish the results on 4 November. If no bloc secures 61 seats, parties will need to negotiate an agreement to form a government.