Israeli slates close and the polls hold: neither bloc reaches 61 seats
Channel 12, Channel 13 and Kan all published on September 10 without a majority for either camp. Two polls 48 hours apart disagree by seven seats on Likud.
Polling day is Tuesday, October 27, 2026, the last date permitted by law — Chatham House notes most parties preferred a different date and could not agree, so the clock was allowed to run down. Parties filed official slates with the Central Elections Committee this week; the Times of Israel described the September 10 polls as released “the day after parties submitted their official slates,” and recorded the Pirate Party of Israel filing on September 7. The surveys published on the 10th by Channel 12, Channel 13 and Kan all left both camps short of the 61 seats needed to govern. Channel 12 gave the anti-Netanyahu bloc 57 and the pro-Netanyahu bloc 52, leaving eleven seats outside both. The Channel 13 and Kan seat distributions were not available.
The more instructive number is the disagreement between houses. Direct Polls for i24NEWS, fielded September 9, put Likud first on 27 with Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar on 22, then B’Yachad 10, The Democrats 9, United Torah Judaism 8, Otzma Yehudit 8, the Joint List 7, Yisrael Beytenu 7, Shas 7, Religious Zionism–Zehut 6, Ra’am 5 and Amcha Israel 4, with the Reservists and Economic Party on 1.4 percent and Blue and White on 1.1 percent below the threshold. A Jerusalem Post poll published around September 8 inverted the top two: Yashar 25, up from 23, and Likud flat on 20. The Post did not identify a pollster in the material available. Israel Policy Forum’s 120 Project puts Likud at roughly 25 to 27 across most polls, against 32 seats in 2022.
Assessment: Treat the two published polls as one finding about pollsters rather than two about voters. A seven-seat spread on Likud inside 48 hours is a house effect, and the houses that flatter Likud — Direct Polls for i24, Filber for Channel 14 — are the ones campaign messaging will cite. Direct Polls' own prior wave carried a margin of error of ±4.2 points on 522 respondents; that alone swallows most of what commentators will call momentum. Two structural questions decide the arithmetic, and neither is resolved: whether the Hendel–Zelekha slate and Amcha Israel clear the threshold, and whether the Joint List that i24 tested at seven seats actually filed, after Ta’al’s objections over seat distribution collapsed the tripartite talks. Check the Committee’s filings, not the seat tables.