Israel Certifies Final Election Results and the Deadlock Remains
JERUSALEM — Israel formally certified the results of its October 27 election on Wednesday, November 4, and the final count left neither of the two main blocs with the majority needed to form a government.
The Central Elections Committee handed the official results to President Isaac Herzog at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem. Herzog said he received the official results of the elections for the 26th Knesset as the committee had declared them.
The certified results gave the bloc led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 53 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. The opposition bloc led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot won 48 seats. The two Arab-led parties won 19 seats combined. A government needs 61 seats.
No seat changed from the complete count published on October 30. The committee had described that count as subject to routine checks and minor corrections before formal certification. The certification on November 4 closed that review with the same seat allocation.
Likud, the party led by Netanyahu, finished first with 27 seats. Eisenkot’s Yashar party won 21 seats, and B’Yachad, the alliance associated with Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, won 12 seats.
The remaining seats went to the Joint List with 11, the Democrats with 8, Ra’am with 8, Yisrael Beiteinu with 7, Otzma Yehudit with 7, United Torah Judaism with 7, Shas with 6 and Religious Zionism with 6.
The Netanyahu bloc of 53 seats is made up of Likud, Otzma Yehudit, United Torah Judaism, Religious Zionism and Shas. The Eisenkot bloc of 48 seats is made up of Yashar, B’Yachad, the Democrats and Yisrael Beiteinu. The Arab parties, the Joint List and Ra’am, hold the other 19 seats.
The committee reported 5,717,397 ballots cast from 7,331,981 eligible voters, a turnout of 77.98 percent. Of the ballots cast, 5,691,426 were valid and 25,971 were disqualified.
The committee said its review found no irregularities indicating that the vote was compromised or that the results were altered in any way, according to the Times of Israel. The review followed complaints from political parties and claims by Netanyahu and his supporters that Arab-led parties had stolen the election, claims the committee rejected.
Committee chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg said the allegations of foreign interference were only suspicions and that even if they were confirmed, the extent of their possible effect would be limited, the Times of Israel reported. He said parties that disputed the count could pursue an election petition under the law after publication.
The full committee ratified the results on Wednesday morning, and the handover to Herzog, together with publication in the state gazette, constituted formal certification, the Times of Israel reported.
Herzog was due to begin consultations with the elected parties on Wednesday, meeting the smaller parties first. Religious Zionism was scheduled first at 5 p.m., followed by Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu. Consultations were set to continue on Thursday, November 5, with the other factions, closing in the evening with Eisenkot’s Yashar party and then Likud.
After the consultations, Herzog has seven days, until November 11, to name the member of the Knesset he believes is best positioned to form a government. The candidate he names will have 28 days to assemble a coalition, with a possible extension of up to 14 days.
The arithmetic facing that candidate is unchanged by certification. Netanyahu needs eight more seats to reach 61. Eisenkot needs 13 more seats. No bloc can reach a majority from its own parties alone.
On paper, Eisenkot’s 48 seats plus the 19 seats held by the Arab parties would total 67. That arithmetic is not itself a coalition agreement, and any majority will require support from outside the bloc that leads it, whether from Arab parties, from parties in the rival bloc, or through a broad arrangement that crosses the usual dividing lines.
A broad arrangement is also part of the arithmetic. Likud and Yashar together hold 48 seats, and either bloc combined with parties from the other side could reach 61 without Arab-party support. Which combination Herzog judges most workable will depend on what the parties tell him in the consultations.
The new Knesset is scheduled to be sworn in on November 10, before Herzog’s November 11 deadline to name a candidate. The election on October 27 was Israel’s first national vote since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. The Netanyahu alliance held 68 seats in the outgoing Knesset, according to the Times of Israel, so the certified result of 53 seats is a loss of 15 seats for that alliance.
If the candidate Herzog names cannot assemble 61 seats, the process allows further attempts to form a government. If no candidate succeeds, Israel would face another election early next year, the Associated Press reported. For now, the certified result settles the count and starts the clock on the decision over who gets the first chance to govern.
