Last week we ran Israel’s election 50,000 times. On election night we checked that forecast against the exit polls. Now the real ballots are in, and the number that matters most, Netanyahu’s camp, came out exactly where we had it: 53 seats.
The highlights
- We nailed Netanyahu’s number. We said his camp would get 53 seats. With 97.63% of ballots counted, it has 53. No pollster and no exit poll got closer.
- The deadlock held. Nobody gets to 61 without the Arab parties, as 95% of our simulations said.
- Our big miss was the Arab parties. They won 19 seats, a record. We said 15, and gave 19 or more about a 1 in 60 chance. Every final poll had them at 13 to 15.
- Likud came in bigger than almost anyone expected. It got 27 seats against our 22, as Netanyahu squeezed his own partners. i24’s poll came closest, at 26.
- Channel 14 missed by 9. Its final poll had Netanyahu’s camp at 62. But the mainstream exit polls undercounted the right again, by 3 seats.
- Trump says his endorsement “helped him a lot.” The polls taken after it don’t show that.
- Hendel and Winter are out. The remaining ballots probably can’t save Hendel, and Winter is further back.
- Late twist: Liberman may be walking away. Channel 12 reports he has cut contact with Eisenkot and Bennett. Without his 7 seats, the anti-Netanyahu side can’t reach 61, even with the Arab parties.
- Likud says the election was “stolen.” Here’s what has actually been shown so far.
One warning first: the count isn’t quite finished. As of 11:35 pm Wednesday, 97.63% of ballots had been counted, according to Central Elections Committee figures compiled by The Petek. What’s left are the last few regular ballots and the “double envelope” ballots from soldiers, diplomats, prisoners, hospital patients and others who voted away from home.
There are about 430,000 to 480,000 of them, roughly 10 seats’ worth of votes (Times of Israel). They should be counted by Thursday evening. Polling stations get checked next week, and the official results are due November 4 (Ynet).
Will they change anything? A little. Double-envelope ballots usually look a lot like the rest of the vote, with a slight tilt toward the Zionist parties and away from the ultra-Orthodox and Arab parties. In 2022 they moved United Torah Judaism down a seat and Yisrael Beiteinu up one. Expect a seat or two to move, not the overall picture. We’ll update the numbers here when the count is final.
The scorecard
Here’s every party: the real count, our forecast, our “likely range” (where the party landed in 8 out of 10 of our simulations), and the three mainstream exit polls (Kan 11, Channel 12 and Channel 13). Seat counts are from the count at 97.63%, as of 11:35 pm Wednesday (The Petek, using Central Elections Committee figures).
| Real count | Our forecast | Our likely range | Exit polls | Verdict | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Netanyahu’s camp | 53 | 53 | 48 to 57 | 50 | Bullseye |
| Eisenkot’s camp | 48 | 52 | 47 to 56 | 52 to 53 | Inside, barely |
| Arab parties | 19 | 15 | 12 to 17 | 17 to 18 | Missed |
| Likud (Netanyahu) | 27 | 22 | 19 to 24 | 24 to 25 | Missed |
| Yashar (Eisenkot) | 21 | 22 | 19 to 25 | 21 to 23 | Inside |
| Beyachad (Bennett) | 12 | 14 | 11 to 15 | 12 to 14 | Inside |
| Joint List | 12 | 9 | 7 to 11 | 10 to 11 | Missed |
| The Democrats (Golan) | 8 | 9 | 7 to 10 | 9 to 10 | Inside |
| Yisrael Beiteinu (Liberman) | 7 | 7 | 6 to 9 | 7 to 9 | Bullseye |
| United Torah Judaism | 7 | 8 | 6 to 9 | 6 to 7 | Inside |
| Otzma Yehudit (Ben-Gvir) | 7 | 8 | 7 to 10 | 6 to 7 | Inside |
| Ra’am (Abbas) | 7 | 6 | 4 to 7 | 7 | Inside |
| Shas (Deri) | 6 | 8 | 6 to 9 | 6 to 8 | Inside |
| Religious Zionism (Smotrich) | 6 | 7 | 5 to 8 | 6 | Inside |
| Amcha Yisrael (Winter) | 0 | 0 | Misses in 77% of runs | 0 | Right |
| The Reservists (Hendel) | 0 | 0 | Misses in 64% of runs | 0 | Right |
So 9 of the 11 parties that got in landed inside our range, and both threshold calls were right. A range that’s supposed to catch 8 out of 10 should miss now and then, so two misses is about what an honest forecast looks like.
The catch is that both misses went the same way. Likud and the Joint List both came in bigger than anyone expected, and the seats came out of Likud’s partners and Eisenkot’s camp.
What we got right, and what we got wrong
Right: Netanyahu’s camp, 53 seats. On election night the mainstream exit polls had it at 50. We warned then that in 2022 the exit polls undercounted the right by 2 or 3 seats. They did it again: 50 in the exit polls, 53 in the count.
How did we get it? Mostly by not throwing out polls we might not like. Channel 14 and i24 had Netanyahu’s camp at 62 and 58. Everyone else had 48 to 51. Our model kept all of them and weighted each by its track record.
To be fair to the simpler approach, a plain average of every final poll would have said 52, which is also close. Leave out Channel 14 and i24, and the plain average drops to 50, as far off as the exit polls. The lesson isn’t that our weights are magic. It’s that the polls you don’t like still carry information.
Right: the deadlock. In 95% of our simulations, neither camp got to 61 without the Arab parties. That’s where we are.
Right: the threshold. To get into the Knesset, a party needs 3.25% of the vote. We said Winter’s and Hendel’s parties would most likely both miss, and both did. Hendel’s Reservists are at 2.63% and Winter’s Amcha Yisrael at 1.61% (The Petek). By our rough math, Hendel would need about 1 in 11 of the remaining ballots to get in, more than three times his share so far. Soldiers may like a party called the Reservists more than most voters do, but that’s a big ask. Hendel says he’s “waiting for the counting of the double envelopes.” Winter said: “I did not succeed. Not yet” (Jerusalem Post).
Wrong: the Arab parties, by a lot. We said 15 seats. They got 19, up from 10 in the last Knesset. In our 50,000 simulations, 19 or more came up about 1.6% of the time, roughly 1 in 60. No final poll had them above 15.
The reason is turnout. Channel 12 estimated Arab turnout at around 80%, a record (Al Jazeera), up from about 55% in 2022 (Jewish Chronicle). Polls are built partly on who voted last time. When hundreds of thousands of people who usually stay home show up, the polls can’t see them coming.
Our model did allow for the polls being wrong about the Arab parties, by a typical 1 or 2 seats, based on past elections. This miss was 4 or 5 seats, much bigger than anything in the history we built it on.
Why did they show up this time? Calcalist points to two reasons (Calcalist). The first is crime: violent crime in Arab towns has been rising for years, and many voters feared Ben-Gvir would stay in charge of the police. The second is that boycotting stopped making sense. Staying home punishes nobody but yourself. The two parties also ran separately but signed a surplus-vote agreement, so the split didn’t waste votes.
For scale: the previous record was 15 seats, in March 2020, when all the Arab parties ran as a single list. Turnout then fell to about 45% in 2021 and about 53% in 2022. This year’s 19, on two separate lists, beats that record by 4.
Wrong: Likud. We said 22. It got 27, which happened in barely 1% of our simulations. The extra seats didn’t come from Eisenkot’s side. They came from Likud’s own partners: Shas came in two seats below our forecast, and United Torah Judaism, Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism one seat each. We got the size of Netanyahu’s camp right and the split inside it wrong.
That wasn’t an accident. It was Netanyahu’s plan. Two weeks before the vote, Maariv reported that Likud’s internal polls had Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit at 12 to 15 seats, and that Likud wanted to shrink it back to its “natural dimensions” of 7 or 8 at most. Likud also campaigned to keep Winter and Hendel under the threshold (Maariv). Ynet reported a joint Likud and Smotrich field operation that left Ben-Gvir out, partly because Netanyahu wanted to keep him away from the Defense Ministry (Ynet).
Otzma got 7. Winter and Hendel missed. The polls didn’t fully pick up votes moving around inside Netanyahu’s camp, and neither did we.
Close, but low: Eisenkot’s camp. We said 52. It got 48, the bottom edge of our range. Every party in it came in at or below our number: Beyachad 2 seats lower, Yashar and the Democrats 1 lower each, and Yisrael Beiteinu exactly on.
Did Trump’s endorsement help?
On Wednesday, Trump said his endorsement of Netanyahu “helped him a lot,” and that Netanyahu was “probably winning or tied” (Ynet). Can we test that? Partly.
Trump endorsed Netanyahu on October 18, nine days before the vote (Maariv). Here’s what the same pollsters showed for Netanyahu’s camp before and after:
| Pollster | Last poll before Oct 18 | Polls after | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maariv (Lazar) | 51 | 48 | 3 down |
| Kan 11 (Kantar) | 53 | 50 | 3 down |
| i24 News (Direct Polls) | 60 | 58 | 2 down |
| Channel 13 | 51 | 49 to 50 | 1 or 2 down |
| Israel Hayom (Kantar) | 51 | 50 | 1 down |
| Channel 12 (Midgam) | 49 | 50 to 51 | 1 or 2 up |
| Channel 14 (Filber) | 61 | 62 | 1 up |
Poll numbers are from israel2026.co.il, which collects published polls.
On average, Netanyahu’s camp slipped about a seat after the endorsement. And since our forecast was built on those later polls, any Trump effect was already baked into our 53.
Yes, the right beat the final polls by 3 seats. But the polls undercounted the right by about as much in 2022, with no Trump endorsement. That looks like a polling habit, not a Trump effect.
There’s also the question of which came first. Maariv’s sources say Trump held off on endorsing, partly because his backing of Viktor Orbán in Hungary had ended in defeat. He went public after he was shown Likud’s internal polls with Netanyahu gaining. In other words, he may have endorsed a trend rather than started one.
And “winning or tied” isn’t the result. Netanyahu’s camp is 8 seats short of a majority, down from 64 in 2022. Likud is the biggest party, but 5 seats smaller than last time.
We can’t rule out a small effect. An endorsement could, for example, have nudged right-wing voters toward Likud and away from its partners. But the numbers don’t show the big swing Trump describes.
Which pollster got it right?
There are two fair ways to grade a pollster, and this year they give different answers.
The first: how close did it get on Netanyahu’s camp? That’s the number that decides whether he can govern. The second: add up how far off it was on every party, one by one. On both, lower is better.
| Final poll before the election | Netanyahu’s camp | Off by | Total seats off, party by party |
|---|---|---|---|
| Our forecast | 53 | 0 | 18 |
| Kan 11 (Kantar) | 51 | 2 low | 24 |
| Zman Yisrael (Tatika) | 51 | 2 low | 24 |
| Channel 12 (Midgam) | 51 | 2 low | 26 |
| Israel Hayom (Kantar) | 50 | 3 low | 22 |
| Channel 16 (Maagar Mochot) | 50 | 3 low | 28 |
| Channel 13 (Midgam Project) | 49 | 4 low | 26 |
| Walla (Lazar) | 48 | 5 low | 26* |
| i24 News (Direct Polls) | 58 | 5 high | 14 |
| Channel 14 (Filber) | 62 | 9 high | 18 |
*Walla published only some party numbers, so we filled in the rest from Lazar’s previous poll.
On the big number, every mainstream pollster was 2 to 5 seats too low, and the two Filber-lineage outlets were 5 and 9 too high. Our average landed in between, right on it.
On party-by-party accuracy, i24 beat everyone, including us. Its poll had Likud at 26, closer than anyone else. Channel 14 tied us for second. Direct Polls and Filber saw something the others didn’t: right-wing voters crowding into Likud at the expense of its partners. What they got wrong was the size of the whole right.
The exit polls tell the same story:
| Exit poll | Netanyahu’s camp | Off by |
|---|---|---|
| Kan 11, Channel 12, Channel 13 | 50 | 3 low |
| i24 News | 55 | 2 high |
| Channel 14 | 60 | 7 high |
Filber, round three
In Part 1 we said: if the final count moves toward Channel 14 the way it did in 2022, Filber gets the last laugh again. If it doesn’t, his lean finally caught up with him.
The count did move toward Channel 14, from 50 in the exit polls to 53. Then it stopped, 7 seats short of his exit poll and 9 short of his final poll. On election morning he said Netanyahu’s camp would get at least 60. He named the one thing that could break that forecast: Arab turnout. He called 70% Arab turnout “fiction.” The estimates now are closer to 80%.
In 2021 and 2022, Filber’s lean toward the right was a correction to everyone else’s misses. This year it was a miss of its own.
“Stolen”? What’s actually been shown
On Wednesday, Likud said in a statement that the election was “stolen by Arab parties who support terrorism and the annihilation of the Jewish state.” It accused them of “corruption, threats, violence, falsehoods and the use of prohibited software,” and said it was submitting “testimonies and evidence to the authorities” (The Journal).
Here’s what is on the public record so far:
- One real case. Police arrested three people overnight on suspicion of buying votes for Ra’am, and seized envelopes and more than 24,000 shekels in cash. Dean Livne, acting director-general of the Central Elections Committee, called it “unusual” and isolated, and said it’s under investigation (The Journal).
- Other complaints went nowhere. Yashar, Yisrael Beiteinu and Winter’s party also complained about tampering. The committee said it found “no indication” of it, and Shin Bet head David Zini said the vote was being monitored properly (Jewish Chronicle).
- Ra’am’s answer. Mansour Abbas accused Netanyahu of “lying and inciting against” his party (The Journal).
Now the math. The Arab parties beat the polls by about 4 seats, or something like 170,000 votes. A vote-buying ring caught with 24,000 shekels doesn’t come close to that. The surge was also visible in public all day long: in Part 1 we showed Umm al-Fahm at 70% turnout by 8 pm, against 38% in 2022.
If Likud has evidence of something much bigger, it will have to show it. So far, publicly, it hasn’t. Until it does, the simplest explanation is the one that fits the numbers: a lot of Arab citizens who usually stay home decided to vote.
Who can govern now
Late update: Liberman steps back
On Wednesday night, Channel 12 reported that Avigdor Liberman has largely cut off contact with Eisenkot and Bennett and isn’t answering their calls (Times of Israel). According to the report, he’s keeping both of his promises: no government led by Netanyahu, and no minority government that relies on the Arab parties. He has also rejected the opposition’s idea of taking over the Knesset speakership. He expects Eisenkot to come under pressure to form a unity government with Netanyahu, and would rather Eisenkot make that move on his own.
Why it matters: without Liberman’s 7 seats, every party outside Netanyahu’s camp, Arab parties included, adds up to 60. One short. Liberman is the only route to a majority without Netanyahu, and he’s reportedly stepping off it. What’s left are governments built on Likud and Yashar.
He says he saw this coming. Two weeks before the vote, he called Eisenkot “Gantz 2” and accused him of aiming for a government with Netanyahu and Deri, “to be first in the rotation” (Mako).
A caution: this is one report, and Liberman hasn’t confirmed it on the record. He has played hardball after elections before. In 2019, his refusal to join Netanyahu over drafting the ultra-Orthodox forced a repeat election.
Here’s the coalition math again, with real seats this time:
| Possible government | Seats | Gets to 61? | What stands in the way |
|---|---|---|---|
| Netanyahu’s current coalition | 53 | No | The numbers |
| Netanyahu’s camp plus Liberman | 60 | No, one short | Liberman won’t sit with Netanyahu |
| Eisenkot, Bennett, Golan and Liberman | 48 | No | The numbers |
| The same, plus Ra’am | 55 | No | Bennett and Liberman have ruled out Ra’am anyway |
| Eisenkot’s camp, with both Arab parties backing it from outside | 67 | Yes | Liberman says no minority government |
| Likud, Yashar, Beyachad and Yisrael Beiteinu (a unity government) | 67 | Yes | Eisenkot, Bennett and Liberman all refuse to sit with Netanyahu |
| Likud, Yashar, Shas and United Torah Judaism | 61 | Yes, exactly | Eisenkot ran on drafting the ultra-Orthodox |
| Eisenkot’s camp plus Shas | 54 | No | Liberman says no Shas |
| Everyone outside Netanyahu’s camp except Liberman, Arab parties included | 60 | No, one short | Needs Liberman, who reportedly won’t |
The count made things harder for Eisenkot. On election night his camp plus Ra’am was 59 or 60. Now it’s 55. EEvery option that gets to 61 still requires someone to break a promise. If the Liberman report is right, every option left runs through Likud.
Look at the second-to-last row. It’s exactly the government Shas leader Aryeh Deri said he wanted: “a broad government with Eisenkot, led by Netanyahu.” It has exactly 61 seats. The problem is that Eisenkot’s whole campaign was about drafting the ultra-Orthodox, and those are the two parties he’d need.
What they’re saying
- Netanyahu: “We must form a strong national right-wing government.” He said it is “absolutely forbidden” to form a government that relies on “anti-Zionist Arab parties” (Channel 13).
- Eisenkot: “The public voted for change.” And: “With such high turnout, it would be a mistake to hold another election” (Channel 13).
- Bennett: “We will patiently await the true results, because a lot can still change” (Channel 13).
- Mansour Abbas: “With the numbers we have now, there is no government” (Al Jazeera).
- President Herzog: “Everything must be done, certainly after yesterday, so we don’t repeat elections.” Kipa reports he’s expected to give Eisenkot the first shot at forming a government, and that Netanyahu would prefer it that way, betting Eisenkot fails (Kipa).
Washington is in the picture too. Citing unnamed people around Trump, Ynet reports that “a government with Ben-Gvir is not an option,” and that Trump may push for a unity government with a rotation that ends with Netanyahu stepping aside. Ynet’s reported reason: Saudi Arabia and other Arab states won’t normalize ties while Netanyahu leads Israel (Ynet). That fits the rotation deal Israel Hayom reported before the election. None of it is on the record.
The long shot gets longer: Shas and the first Mizrahi prime minister
In Part 1 we put the odds of Shas crossing over and making Eisenkot Israel’s first Mizrahi prime minister at about 1 in 20. We said one thing that would raise them was a final count that moved a seat or two toward Eisenkot.
It moved the other way. Eisenkot’s camp dropped from 52 or 53 in the exit polls to 48. Likud rose to 27, six seats ahead of Yashar.
The math is now brutal. Eisenkot’s camp plus Shas is 54. Add United Torah Judaism and it’s 61, but Liberman says no Shas, and without his 7 seats it’s 54. The only way to make it work runs through Ra’am, which Bennett and Liberman have ruled out. And if Liberman really has walked away, it’s over: Eisenkot’s camp without him, plus Shas, is 47.
Meanwhile, Shas’s other option got better. Netanyahu leads the biggest party, and Deri’s preferred government, Netanyahu with Eisenkot, is now exactly 61 seats on paper.
We’re lowering it to about 1 in 50. That’s a judgment call, not a model output. The Mizrahi story is still real, and it may come back in a future election. This time, the numbers aren’t there.
What happens next
- Thursday evening: the double-envelope ballots should be fully counted (Ynet).
- Next week: officials check polling station results.
- November 4: the official results are published.
- After that: Herzog meets every party and asks whom it recommends for prime minister. The candidate with the best chance gets 28 days to form a government, plus up to 14 more. If that fails, someone else gets a turn. If nobody manages it, Israel goes back to the polls.
When the double envelopes are in, we’ll update the numbers in this post. If a seat moves, you’ll see it here.
Selected Sources
- Seats and vote shares at 97.63% counted, using Central Elections Committee figures: The Petek
- Earlier tallies: Jerusalem Post, Kipa
- Bloc totals through the count: Jewish Chronicle; exit polls vs the count: The Media Line
- Double-envelope ballots and turnout: Times of Israel; counting timeline and past shifts: Ynet; official results date: Wikipedia
- Hendel and Winter: Jerusalem Post
- Arab turnout and Abbas: Al Jazeera; why Arab voters turned out, and past records: Calcalist
- Likud’s plan to shrink Ben-Gvir: Maariv, Ynet
- Trump’s remarks: Ynet; timing of the endorsement: Maariv; polls before and after: israel2026.co.il; Trump’s circle on a unity government: Ynet
- Likud’s “stolen” claim, the arrests and the committee’s response: The Journal; tampering complaints: Jewish Chronicle
- Netanyahu, Eisenkot and Bennett: Channel 13
- Herzog and the first mandate: Kipa
- Our pre-election forecast: Jewlicious
― Tom Robbins
