Israel’s Knesset election is five days away, and the polls agree on one thing: nobody can reach 61 seats. With voting set for Tuesday, October 27, Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party averages 22.4 seats in the latest poll from each outlet — ahead of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud at 19.4 — but neither Netanyahu’s bloc (about 49–53 seats) nor the opposition (about 50–54) has a clear path to a governing majority in the 120-seat parliament.
The poll-of-polls, updated on October 22, shows just how fragmented the race has become. One broadcaster’s survey even put Netanyahu’s bloc at 61 — an outlier other pollsters don’t see — while most project both camps falling well short, with Arab parties and smaller lists holding the balance.
The threshold trap
The most sensitive variable is the 3.25% electoral threshold. Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism is polling dangerously close to it; if it fails to enter the Knesset, those right-wing votes are wasted. Netanyahu has reportedly explored technical mergers to ensure no right-wing votes are lost, including potentially offering a Likud slot to a small faction’s representative.
Ofer Winter’s People of Israel party, below the threshold in earlier polls, has crept into some projections with four seats — a swing that could decide whether the right has any route to 61 at all.
How the vote works
All 120 seats are elected by proportional representation with closed national lists. There are no absentee ballots — every Israeli except diplomats must vote in person. Diplomatic missions already voted on October 20; polling stations open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Israel time on October 27, with exit polls at closing and official results due November 4. It is the first election since the October 7, 2023 attacks and the wars that followed.
The deadlock extends the blocs’ deadlock reported six days out, even as the IDF opened 850 polling stations for early voting.
The arithmetic is unforgiving. With a 3.25% electoral threshold — roughly four seats — even small shifts decide the outcome: parties just above it win representation, parties just below it waste every vote. Surplus-vote agreements between allied lists, allocated by the Bader–Ofer method, add another layer of gamesmanship. That is why Netanyahu’s reported exploration of technical mergers matters so much — in a race this tight, saving a single small party from falling below the threshold could be the difference between a coalition and another deadlock.
