The polls are officially closed in the 2019 do-over election, and the initial results – based on anonymous exit polls – are in. All three major news outlets in Israel said it was too close to call, with neither the Left nor the Right commanding a majority of the Knesset.
Likud and Blue and White are essentially tied with around 32 seats. While the Likud and its traditional allies on the Right have a clear majority, one of those allies – MK Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beytenu party – has refused to back Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this time around, which may prevent Netanyahu from assembling a coalition and forming a new government.
The Left is poised to get slightly more seats than in the April election (particularly in light of revised exit poll data from Channel 13 News) but faces an uphill battle in forming a governing coalition that would win the support of the Knesset through a confidence vote.
Lieberman's Yisrael Beytenu, which is expected to get around nine seats, is a wildcard in this election. Lieberman vowed late Tuesday that he would not throw his support behind either bloc but would insist on a unity government.
However, this seems impossible to achieve since Blue and White has ruled out sitting in a government with Netanyahu, due to the prime minister's potential indictment in three separate corruption cases. This could result in a prolonged stalemate or even another election.
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When the results of the exit polls conducted by Channels 11, 12, and 13 were integrated, the results were as follows:
Blue and White: 33.6
Likud: 32
Joint Arab List: 12
Yisrael Beytenu: 8.6
Shas: 8.6
Yamina: 8
United Torah Judaism: 8
Democratic Union: 5.3
Labor-Gesher: 5.3
None of the polls showed the far-right Otzma Yehudit passing the minimum electoral threshold.
Channel 12's exit poll predicted the following number of seats for the 22nd Knesset:
Blue and White: 34
Likud: 33
Yisrael Beytenu: 8
Yamina: 8
Labor-Gesher: 5
Democratic Union: 5
Shas: 8
United Torah Judaism: 8
Joint Arab List: 11
The Channel 11 exit poll gave the Likud and Blue and White 32 seats each, and 10 seats for Yisrael Beytenu.
Channel 11 predicted 12 seats for the Joint Arab List, 9 for Shas, 8 for United Torah Judaism, 7 for Yamina, and 5 each for Labor-Gesher and the Democratic Union.
The Channel 11 results also showed Otzma Yehudit failing to pass the minimum threshold.
Channel 13's exit poll also showed Blue and White in the lead, with 33 seats, followed by the Likud at 31.
Channel 13 predicted 13 seats for the Joint Arab List, 9 for Shas, 8 each for United Torah Judaism and Yisrael Beytenu, and 6 each for Yamina, the Democratic Union, and Labor-Gesher.
Otzma Yehudit failed to pass the minimum electoral threshold.
How do the numbers shake out when we look at the blocs?
According to Channel 12, the Right has 57 seats compared to 55 for the Center-Left.
Channel 13 gave 58 seats to the Center-Left and 54 to the Right, with Yisrael Beytenu in a position to tip the scales, with a projected 8 seats.
Yisrael Beytenu had even more influence on the blocs according to the Channel 11 results, which gave the Center-Left 54 seats and 56 seats to the Right, with 10 for Yisrael Beytenu.
When the results of all exit polls were integrated, the Right and Left were tied with 56 seats each, with 8 in the hands of Yisrael Beytenu.
It will take at least two days of ballot counting to arrive at the final results for the second election of 2019.
Voting took place at 10,885 voting stations across the country, with 6,394,030 Israelis on the rolls as eligible to vote.
In the previous election, in April, parties needed 32,860 votes for one Knesset mandate. To pass the electoral threshold, parties need 3.25% of the overall votes. The voter turnout rate in the April election was 68.5%.
As of 8 p.m., 3,418,531 voters had cast their ballots, 63.7% of eligible voters and 2.4 percentage points more than had voted at the same time on Election Day on April 9.
Early Wednesday, the official vote count began as election ballots were handed over to the headquarters of the Central Elections Committee. Voter turnout for the election stood at 69.4%, a small uptick than April's vote.
In the 70 years since the country's first election, the voter turnout rate has steadily declined. The 1949 election recorded an all-time high turnout of 86.9%.
In 2013, for the first time since the state's inception, fewer than 70% of Israelis – 68.9% – exercised their democratic right to vote, while voter turnout for the 17th Knesset in 2006 was at an all-time low of 63.5%.
Subsequent elections began seeing an uptick in voter participation; in the election for the 20th Knesset, voter turnout – at 72.34% – passed the 70% mark for the first time in a decade.
As stated, voter turnout in April dipped below the 70% mark to 68.5%, and this time around, in an effort to learn from their mistakes, the parties had plans to make sure their supporters actually went out and vote.
