Israelis went to the polls on Tuesday in an election that will determine whether Benjamin Netanyahu remains prime minister after more than a decade in power, with final pre-election polling showing him locked in a near neck-and-neck race against former military chief Gadi Eisenkot.
Neither Netanyahu's bloc nor the opposition "change bloc" fronted by Eisenkot's newly formed Yashar party is projected to win the 61 seats needed for a majority on its own, meaning weeks of coalition bargaining likely lie ahead regardless of Tuesday's count. The change bloc also includes former prime minister Naftali Bennett and ex-defence minister Avigdor Lieberman, both right-leaning hawks on security, alongside left-leaning former general Yair Golan.
Security dominates the campaign
The vote has been shaped above all by the October 7 attacks, with the opposition hammering Netanyahu over what it calls an unprecedented security failure and demanding an independent commission of inquiry he has long resisted. Netanyahu has instead cast himself as "Mr Security," pointing to what he describes as strategic wins across the region's wars and his relationship with President Trump. Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 reported this week that Netanyahu had pushed for last-minute military action that risked a confrontation with Iran ahead of the vote, a move his own military chief, Eyal Zamir, opposed; CNN separately reported he sought Trump's sign-off for new strikes on Iran and was refused. Netanyahu has denied both accounts. In the campaign's final days he also posted an AI-generated image depicting a nuclear strike on Tel Aviv, warning only he could protect Israel from a nuclear-armed Iran — a move Eisenkot dismissed as "hysterical."
Netanyahu, who also faces an ongoing corruption trial he denies any wrongdoing in, is relying on another alliance with far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties to return to office. A separate fight over exempting ultra-Orthodox men from military conscription, despite a Supreme Court ruling against the practice, has also loomed over the race. Eisenkot has pledged to end Hamas's rule in Gaza within 18 months through either a US-led peace plan or further military action, while supporting a crackdown on extremist West Bank settlers.
With the electoral arithmetic unusually tight on both sides, a separate newsroom's rundown of what today's vote could mean for Netanyahu's war-era legacy notes that the final government may hinge on concessions few party leaders have been willing to rule out publicly before the results are in.
