Netanyahu claims a majority before dawn as Israel’s count sits at a fraction of the vote

Israel voted Tuesday for the 26th Knesset, its first national election since 7 October 2023. The Central Elections Committee put near-final turnout at 77.7 percent as of 10 p.m., which it described as the highest since 1999; CNN, citing the committee, reported roughly 5.7 million ballots cast from about 7.3 million eligible voters, and NBC News put the increase in ballots over 2022 at 7.1 percent. The Times of Israel’s hourly alerts traced the fastest ladder on record — 31.5 percent at noon and 44.9 percent at 2 p.m., both the highest at those hours since 1973; 55.7 percent at 4 p.m., eight points above the same hour in 2022; 74.3 percent by 8 p.m., already above the 2022 final total. Reuters independently described the first nine hours as the fastest pace on record.

The exit polls moved all night and in one direction. Israel Hayom’s full breakdowns had Kan 11 and Channel 13 opening at 22:00 with 53 seats for the bloc around Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar against 50 for Netanyahu’s; Channel 14, which leans right, stood alone at Netanyahu 60, Eisenkot 43. By 23:00 Kan had revised Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid’s B’Yachad down to 13 and the Joint List up to 11, converging with Channels 12 and 13 on 52–50 against the prime minister. Later still, the Jerusalem Post had Channels 13 and 11 at 51–51 and Al Jazeera reported both blocs tied at 51 with the Arab parties on 18. CNN, citing Channel 12’s update, recorded the bloc falling from 68 seats in the outgoing Knesset to 52.

None of that is a count. ABC Australia reported the first official batch covered 2,670 ballots. Haaretz’s live file had the committee at 28 percent counted. The tracker Poliwave, at 34.5 percent counted at 5:13 a.m., showed the Netanyahu bloc on 46.3 percent of the popular vote — and its own time series shows that share sliding from 58.8 percent at the opening of the count to 48.0 percent at 23.9 percent counted and 46.3 percent at 34.5 percent, while the Arab parties climbed from 0.2 to 12.3 percent. The Jewish Chronicle’s live file says a final result is unlikely before Thursday, with hundreds of thousands of soldiers' double-envelope ballots outstanding. Netanyahu nonetheless told Likud headquarters that the right had won a “decisive majority” among the Zionist public and that he would form a “right-wing, national government.”

Assessment: The gap to watch is between a broadcaster’s model and a committee’s tally, and both camps spent the night exploiting it. Netanyahu’s bloc had its best night in the first hour of exit polls and in the first hour of counting — the two moments with the least information in them — which is why the early-count surge toward him should be read as a structural artefact of which boxes open first, not as a trend. Yohanan Plesner of the Israel Democracy Institute gave France 24 the more durable read: a major defeat for the coalition, from 68 seats to around 50, without Eisenkot emerging as a clear winner. Soldiers' envelopes decide the margin, and they arrive last.