Israelis are voting in record early numbers on Tuesday in a general election that will decide whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu extends his record run in power or is replaced by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot. The Central Elections Committee said turnout reached 16.68 percent of eligible voters by 10 a.m. — more than 1.2 million ballots cast in the first three hours, the fastest start to an election day since 1981 and up from 15.9 percent at the same hour in 2022. Polls close at 10 p.m. local time, and no results are known yet.
The vote is for all 120 seats in the 26th Knesset, Israel's parliament. A total of 7,331,981 citizens are eligible, choosing among 36 party lists at 12,018 polling stations, and more than half a million of them are voting for the first time. It is Israel's first election since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack and the wars that followed in Gaza, Lebanon and against Iran, and it is widely treated as a national judgment on Netanyahu's handling of those years. Election day is a national holiday, and the state laid on free travel on hundreds of intercity bus routes and every railway line to help people reach the polls. Turnout among soldiers stood at 30 percent by 10 a.m., almost five points higher than in 2022, and Arab towns were voting at roughly three-quarters of the national rate, far above their showing last time.
Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister with 19 years in office across his career, is asking voters to keep him on a record of wartime leadership, running under the slogan "No Surrender" and presenting himself as the only leader tough enough to face Israel's enemies. His opponents have managed to remove him from the premiership only once since 2009, and he was back within 18 months. Eisenkot, who served as chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces and founded the Yashar party last year, leads the opposition "change" bloc with a promise of accountability: a state commission of inquiry into the October 7 failures, which Netanyahu's government has resisted, and enforcement of court orders requiring ultra-Orthodox men to be drafted. Eisenkot's son Gal was killed fighting in Gaza, a loss that sits at the centre of his campaign. Voting at kibbutz Nir Oz, one of the communities attacked on October 7, he said he was convinced the day would bring "a new spirit for the State of Israel."
The day brought an early scandal. Police arrested three residents of Bedouin towns in the Negev — Segev Shalom and Ar'ara BaNegev — on suspicion of preparing to buy votes for Ra'am, the Arab party led by Mansour Abbas. Officers said searches of the men's homes found pre-prepared envelopes holding Ra'am ballot slips together with cash, and tens of thousands of shekels were seized along with envelopes and notes. "This is a suspected attempt to disrupt the purity of elections and the democratic process," police said. Ra'am rejected the accusations, saying there was nothing improper in its activists' conduct, and Abbas demanded the men's immediate release, calling the arrests an obstruction of the election; the party also complained to the Central Elections Committee. Netanyahu seized on the arrests in his first public comment of the day, sharing the story and urging his supporters to "go out and vote en masse" in the face of attempts to undermine the vote. Election officials said police believe the case was a single incident, not part of a wider campaign.
The final opinion polls pointed to deadlock. Most gave Eisenkot's change bloc between 52 and 56 seats and Netanyahu's coalition around 50 — neither within reach of the 61 seats needed to govern — with the Arab lists, projected at roughly 14 to 16 seats between them, holding a possible kingmaker position that the main opposition parties have so far refused to use. The betting markets read the same numbers differently: because they price who ends up as prime minister rather than how parties poll, traders on Polymarket put Eisenkot at 58 percent against 27 percent for Netanyahu, and traders on Kalshi put him at 52 percent against 28 percent, with former prime minister Naftali Bennett at about 10 percent on both. Analysts caution that winning the most seats does not automatically deliver the premiership — the coalition bargaining after the count is where this election will actually be settled.
For ordinary families, the stakes are the price of daily life and who carries the burden of the country's wars. In the final Channel 12 polling, the cost of living and the economy ranked as the issue that mattered most to voters, ahead of the fight over ultra-Orthodox conscription and the October 7 failures — and each of those questions lands directly on households: grocery and housing costs under whoever governs next, whether young ultra-Orthodox men will be called up alongside everyone else's sons, and whether the families of October 7 get the public inquiry they have demanded. The strength of those feelings is visible in the turnout itself: tens of thousands of Israelis living abroad, who have no postal vote, flew home to cast a ballot in person, including on flights organised from the New York area.
Washington is watching this vote as closely as any foreign capital. President Donald Trump endorsed Netanyahu openly on October 18, calling him "a great warrior" and America's great partner of peace in the confrontation with Iran, and warning Tehran that if it does not change its ways, the United States and Israel would "finish the job" — adding that if Israel chose a different leader, America might have to do it alone. Vice President JD Vance pointedly declined to follow, saying he focuses only on American candidates. The outcome matters to the United States in hard terms: Israel is the largest recipient of American military aid, the two countries fought a joint war against Iran's nuclear programme, and the year-old ceasefire in Gaza rests on American guarantees. A Netanyahu victory keeps Trump's closest regional partner in place; an Eisenkot government would still be led by a security hawk who opposes a Palestinian state in the foreseeable future, but one who has criticised settler violence in the West Bank and the far-right partners Netanyahu depends on — a different negotiating partner for Washington on Iran, Gaza and the region, not a hostile one.
What is not known yet is the result. Counting begins when polls close at 10 p.m., when the television networks will publish exit polls; official results will take days, because a record 600,000 to 650,000 double-envelope ballots — from soldiers, police, hospital patients and others voting away from their home stations — are verified and counted after the main tally and are numerous enough to shift seats between the blocs. If neither man can assemble 61 seats, the possible endings include weeks of coalition talks, a unity government, a minority government, Netanyahu remaining as caretaker, or yet another election. President Isaac Herzog, voting early in the day, urged every citizen to take part: "This is our day to go out, make an impact, and vote."
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