Channel 14 put Netanyahu’s bloc at 60 while three broadcasters put it at 50

Four broadcasters released exit polls after polls closed on 27 October for the 26th Knesset. Channel 12 initially put Likud at 24 and Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar at 22, with the Netanyahu bloc on 50 and the Eisenkot bloc on 52; by roughly 2:17am it had revised to 52 and 49. Kan 11 had 25 and 21, with blocs at 50 and 53. Channel 13 started at 25 and 23 and later moved Likud to 27 with the blocs tied. Channel 14, the pro-Netanyahu broadcaster, put Likud at 30 and the Netanyahu bloc at 60 — ten seats above the three others. The Jewish Chronicle liveblog carried a social post making precisely that comparison, and recorded that Channel 14 later revised downward, with Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beytenu clearing the 3.25 percent threshold as the variable that denied Netanyahu a majority in that count.

Every poll agreed Likud was the largest party. None of the mainstream polls gave either bloc the 61 seats required in a 120-seat Knesset, and Channel 12 projected the chamber splitting across 11 parties, according to CNN, which also reported Netanyahu’s bloc falling from 68 seats to roughly 50 on exit-poll numbers. Arab-led parties came in at 16 to 19 depending on the poll, against 10 in the outgoing Knesset — Haaretz’s live headline put them at 19, and the Times of Israel described the result as a record. At the Likud event in Jerusalem, Netanyahu claimed the right-wing bloc had won a “decisive majority” among the “Zionist public” and urged the formation of a “strong right-wing government”; Haaretz rendered the first phrase as a “great majority.” Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar hailed a “clear Jewish majority.” Eisenkot urged Netanyahu to accept defeat and step down, and called on security chiefs to “serve the state and interests of Israeli citizens alone.”

Assessment: Exit polls are not results and nothing here is one. The useful object is the spread: when a partisan broadcaster’s numbers sit ten seats outside the cluster, the distance is itself the finding, and it is measurable without accusing anyone of anything. Watch for two framing traps as counting concludes. First, the kingmaker story — both blocs contain parties that have said they will not sit with the Arab-led lists, per the Jewish Chronicle, so arithmetic that treats 19 seats as available to either side is wrong on the merits. Second, Netanyahu’s two reported phrasings, “decisive” and “great,” differ; we have not heard the audio and neither should anyone quoting it. The procedural item nobody headlined: the elections committee rejected a Likud request to extend voting hours.