Naftali Bennett addresses supporters in a photo he posted on election night, October 27, 2026. Photo: Naftali Bennett via X
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud is the largest party in Israel's election, but with most votes counted his bloc has 53 of the Knesset's 120 seats, short of the 61 needed to govern.
The figures come from the Central Elections Committee's update on Wednesday morning, as reported by the Israeli news site Ynet. The committee said 85.6 percent of votes had been counted, from about 93 percent of polling stations, and corrected an earlier statement that all regular ballots were in. On that count, the bloc led by former army chief Gadi Eisenkot has 48 seats, and the Arab parties have 19.
Likud stands at 26 seats, with more than one million votes. Eisenkot's party, Yashar!, has 21. The joint list of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, called Together, has 12, the same as the Arab Joint List. The Democrats under Yair Golan have 8. Yisrael Beytenu, Ra'am, United Torah Judaism, Shas and Otzma Yehudit have 7 each, and Religious Zionism has 6.
The count is not over. The committee said about 600,000 so called double envelope ballots, cast by soldiers, diplomats, prisoners and others away from their home polling stations, have yet to be counted, and that the last 7 percent of ordinary ballots needs extra oversight, The Times of Israel reported. It said the figures were not expected to change in the immediate future. The Israeli election data account @moshepargod said on Wednesday that the count is expected to end at midnight on Thursday, Israel time.
Both camps have already claimed the result. Speaking to Likud activists in Jerusalem in the early hours of Wednesday, Netanyahu said that "thanks to our heroic soldiers, we have worked wonders." He said two things were clear: that Likud is the largest party in Israel, and that the right wing bloc has "a clear, decisive majority among the Jewish public." Ynet reported that he did not call for unity, thanked his "loyal partners" and said a right wing government must be formed.
On Wednesday morning, Netanyahu turned his fire on the Arab parties. In a post on X, he said Osama Saadi of the Joint List, whom he called a partner of the left wing bloc, had dedicated the result to Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and "occupied Jerusalem." "With these people they want to form a dangerous government," Netanyahu wrote. "We will not let this happen!"
The other side answered with arithmetic. "Netanyahu lost. I know how to count to 120. 65 is more than 55," Golan wrote on X on Wednesday morning, counting the Arab parties with the change bloc. He said the vote of a citizen in the Arab town of Tira is worth exactly the same as a vote in Givat Shmuel, and he called for a "government of change" in partnership with Arab citizens. He also pointed to the 16 seats held by ultra Orthodox parties in Netanyahu's camp, which he said push for mass draft exemptions "while our children fight and are killed."
Bennett struck a similar note. "The coalition of draft dodging has collapsed from 68 to 50 seats," he wrote, using an early figure, and said the leaders of what he called the "repair bloc" were already talking. "We will wait patiently for the real results, because a lot can still change," he added.
The numbers point to a hard road for both sides. Netanyahu's bloc would need eight more seats from outside his camp. Eisenkot's bloc, without the Arab parties, is even further from 61. A government that relies on Arab party support, as the Bennett and Lapid coalition did in 2021, is the option Netanyahu is already campaigning against.
Foreign pressure is also in play. Ynet reported that U.S. President Donald Trump was quick to take credit for Netanyahu's showing, and that people close to him say he wants to keep National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, and possibly Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, out of the next government. The report said Trump might push for a unity government with a rotation that could include Netanyahu's departure. That account could not be independently confirmed.
Markets did not like the uncertainty. The Tel Aviv 90 index fell 4.3 percent on Wednesday morning, and the dollar rose to about 3.12 shekels from 3.02 the day before, Ynet reported.
Turnout was 77.7 percent when polls closed, the highest since 1999, according to the Central Elections Committee. The vote is the first since the war that began after the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. Israelis vote for parties, not for a single leader, and a government needs the support of at least 61 of the 120 members of the Knesset.
Sources
- Ynet alerts on X (Central Elections Committee count)
- Ynet alerts on X (Netanyahu speech)
- Ynet alerts on X (Netanyahu speech, unity)
- Ynet alerts on X (Trump, Ben Gvir)
- Ynet alerts on X (markets)
- @moshepargod on X (double envelopes)
- Benjamin Netanyahu on X (Osama Saadi)
- Yair Golan on X
- Naftali Bennett on X
- DW Amharic, October 27, 2026 (Israel election)
- The Times of Israel (CEC update, 85.6 percent counted)