First Israeli Election Exit Polls Show Narrow Edge For Opposition

The first exit polls from Israel’s elections showed the opposition bloc with a slight edge over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s camp as voting ended Tuesday, but still shy of an outright majority in the 120-seat Knesset. The country’s main pollsters — Channels 11, 12 and 13 — projected the opposition bloc to win 52 or 53 seats, and Netanyahu’s bloc to win 50, although his Likud would be the largest single party in the parliament, with 24 or 25 seats.

Israeli Arab parties also made gains after their voter base turned out in high numbers. The exit polls showed the two Arab-majority groupings, Raam and the Joint List, winning 17 or 18 seats between them. In the last election, Likud had walked away with 32 seats, enabling it to cobble together a coalition with smaller far-right parties after Netanyahu’s traditional allies balked at the corruption cases the premier was facing.

This time around, those mainstream right-wing parties, by and large, vowed to work with main challenger Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party — projected to nab 21 to 23 seats — to form an opposition coalition capable of unseating Netanyahu. A volunteer stands behind a banner for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party at a polling station in Jerusalem on October 27, 2026, on the day of Israel’s legislative election.

Photo by Jewel SAMAD / AFP) “The initial exit poll results indicate a complete lack of confidence in Netanyahu and the October 7 government,” Eisenkot said. Israel’s current opposition chief Yair Lapid said Netanyahu’s bloc had suffered a “crushing defeat”, while left-wing leader Yair Golan said the public had “fired the Netanyahu government”. While Raam and the Joint List do not belong to the opposition bloc, they have expressed openness to supporting it.

Tuesday’s poll was marked by high turnout, with many voters saying they saw it as pivotal for the country’s future. The following is a party-by-party breakdown of the projected seat count in the first exit polls: Pro-Netanyahu camp Likud, right-wing, led by Benjamin Netanyahu: 24 or 25 Otzma Yehudit, far-right, led by Itamar Ben Gvir: 6 or 7 United Torah Judaism, Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox, led by Yaakov Asher: 6 or 7 Shas, Sephardic ultra-Orthodox, led by Aryeh Deri: 6 to 8 Religious Zionism, far-right, led by Bezalel Smotrich: 6 Opposition camp Yashar, centrist, led by Gadi Eisenkot: 21 to 23 Beyahad, centre-right, led by Naftali Bennett: 12 to 14 The Democrats, left-wing, led by Yair Golan: 9 or 10 Yisrael Beiteinu, secular right, led by Avigdor Lieberman: 7 to 9 Arab parties Raam, moderate Islamist, led by Mansour Abbas: 7 Joint List, far-left, led by Yousef Jabareen: 10 or 11