Israel’s Central Election Commission has published preliminary results of the vote count for the parliamentary elections.
As of 07:57, the votes of 2.9 million citizens had been counted. There are 7.3 million eligible voters in the country in total.
According to the Israeli Central Election Commission’s website, the Likud party of incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in the lead. It has secured 20.68 per cent of the votes counted so far – 607,519 people voted for it.
In second place is the ‘Yashar’ party, led by former Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) Gadi Eizenkot. It has received 16.71 per cent, or more than 490,000 votes.
Third place is held by the ‘Together’ party led by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. It was supported by 264,000 voters – 9.01 per cent.
The parliamentary elections in Israel took place on 27 October. Voter turnout exceeded 74 per cent and is reported to have been the highest since 1973. Long queues formed outside polling stations. These were the first elections since the attack by radical Islamists led by Hamas (an organisation designated as a terrorist group by the US and the EU) on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, as well as the wars in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and the military conflict with Iran.
Many regard this vote as pivotal for the country. It is also seen as a referendum on the political course of Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition.
Exit poll results published after the polling stations closed predict that Likud will come first and win 24 or 25 seats in the Knesset, which consists of 120 members. According to these projections, the Yashar party will win 21 or 22 seats.
If the projections are confirmed, Likud will once again become the largest single party in the Israeli parliament, but will lose several seats compared with the previous parliament, where it held 32 seats.
Netanyahu’s policies have divided the country and deepened Israel’s international isolation, writes Reuters. The Prime Minister himself, however, presents himself as the only leader with the resolve to stand up to Israel’s enemies.