Israelis vote with polls showing neither Netanyahu's bloc nor Eisenkot's bloc reaching a majority

Israelis vote on Tuesday to elect the 26th Knesset. Ynet reports that 7,331,981 eligible voters will choose among 36 lists at 12,018 polling stations. Dawn notes that this is the first national vote since the October 7, 2023 attack and that it will deliver a verdict on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and on the country's move to the right. Al Jazeera describes the election as widely billed as the most consequential in Israel's history.

The final polls point to a hung parliament. Haaretz's poll tracker shows Netanyahu's religious-nationalist bloc at about 50 seats and the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff, at between 52 and 56. Neither reaches the 61 needed to govern. Al Jazeera's analysis of possible outcomes says smaller parties and Arab parties could decide who forms a coalition.

Markets are positioned for a change of government. Israeli business site Mako reports that betting markets give Eisenkot a 56% chance of becoming prime minister, against 28.5% for Netanyahu, who stood at 63.5% at the start of the year. Mako also cites a JPMorgan estimate that the shekel could move by up to 3% on the result, stronger on an opposition win and weaker on another Netanyahu government. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange rose 1.5% before the vote.

Iran's state news agency IRNA, which refers to Israel as the "Zionist regime," framed the vote around the October 7 security failure, the costs of regional war and domestic crises, and said rivals' poll leads had put Netanyahu's political future in doubt. Tehran has an interest in presenting the war as politically costly for Israel's leadership. The polling data, independent of that framing, do show Netanyahu's bloc trailing.