The outcome of Israel's election hung in the balance as of Wednesday, with both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and challenger Gadi Eisenkot appearing to be well off the numbers needed to form a governing coalition.
An updated Channel 13 poll early Wednesday put both blocs at 51 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, the Times of Israel reported. A coalition needs 61 to be able to govern. Channel 12 and Kan 11 showed Eisenkot's bloc slightly ahead at 52-50. Arab-led parties, which belong to neither camp, were projected at 17 to 18 seats, their strongest showing ever.
Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff, declared victory and said the preliminary results should give him the first right to try to form a government. "The initial exit poll results indicate a complete lack of confidence in Netanyahu and his October 7 government," he said in a statement on X.
Exit polls are not the official results, which are formally published a week after the election, on Nov. 4. Around 77.7% of eligible voters turned out to cast their ballots, the highest in a Knesset election in 27 years, according to the Central Elections Committee.
The vote came as Israel's first national election since Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023 attack and the subsequent wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, and was widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu's dominance of Israeli politics since 2009.