Channel 14 exit poll shake-up: Yisrael Beytenu falls short, Netanyahu secures majority

Arutz Sheva ^ | 27/10/26

[Eleutheria5]

A dramatic development in the exit polls for Israel's 26th Knesset elections: Channel 14 released an updated projection early Wednesday morning showing that Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu party had fallen below the electoral threshold.

As a result, Netanyahu's bloc rose to 62 seats, giving it the parliamentary majority needed to form a government, according to the updated poll.

The revision marked a significant change from Channel 14's initial projection, which had given Yisrael Beytenu four seats and Netanyahu's bloc just 60.

The update highlighted the substantial differences among the six exit polls released when voting ended. While Channel 14 now projects a 61-seat majority for Netanyahu's bloc, Channel 12 News, Channel 13 News, and Kan 11 News each give the bloc just 50 seats. The i24NEWS poll projects 55 seats, while Channel 16 gives Netanyahu's bloc 53.

All six exit polls show Likud as the largest party, with between 24 and 30 seats, while Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar party is projected to win between 19 and 23 seats.

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TOPICS: Extended News; Israel; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: bibi62; knesset26; likud; majority

[Eleutheria5]

Posted 27/10 at 1:22 am Jlm time.

I voted Yisrael Techillah (Israel First), just because everybody sucks imho but they might suck less, being new.

Otzmah and Likud are on my sh!t parade. Having completely ignored warnings of one massacre, and a prolonged war, they don't get another chance to not screw up.

Anyway, Bibi will still be PM. Hope Smotrich and Ben Gvir are out. I also didn't win the lottery this time, not even a little prize.

[b4me]

this is weird. what’s the point of counting exit polls? people may not tell truth of who they voted for. don’t they count votes?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

WW III, here we come!

[DIRTYSECRET]

So tell us-will Bibi continue?

[Reddy]

“ I voted Yisrael Techillah (Israel First), just because everybody sucks imho but they might suck less, being new.”

Welcome to USA voting, where it boils down to who sucks less.

[monkeyshine]

If that number of 61 or 62 holds then yes, Bibi will continue. There are I think 120 seats (?) so you need a coalition of at least 61 members made up of various parties. I haven’t seen too many reports yet (I’m still at work, just checked in here for an update) but earlier they had Bibi at 25 and then updated it to 27. His main rival was at 22 and then down to 20.

Traditionally the party with the most votes gets the first chance to form a government but that is not a hard and fast rule. The President (a mostly ceremonial role) gets to decide who goes first in the attempt to form a majority government. If Bibi got 27 and more than anyone else, he will likely get first crack to put together a coalition. Sounds like he already has pledges from enough parties to form a government. Probably mostly the same parties that are in his government now.

These are just exit polls so I guess we still have to wait for the actual counts. It could change.

I could see where some people in Israel might blame Bibi for Oct 7th. But on the other hand, the last 3 years Bibi has literally reshaped the map of the entire region and routed Israel’s enemies. Without Oct 7th none of that would have happened. So if I were Israeli I would probably have voted for him or one of his coalition partner parties. Though some of those are the real “far right”, some are mostly similar to Bibi’s party but made up of Russian and Sephardic Jews, and some are extremely religious groups. To get the religious into a coalition you need to promise them a couple of relatively small things - promise not to force them to do military service, to let the continue controlling the religious institutions, and more money for the poor (some of these religious families and sects barely work, all they do is study the faith and make lots of babies so they need to be on the dole and they don’t want to be forced to stop their studies with a tour in the military). The center and left don’t like the far right parties and the religious in particular because they get to control things like marriage licenses and of course most people think they should serve in the army like everyone else). I am oversimplifying but that’s the gist of it.

So if Bibi has 27 and he gets another 14 from the religious parties and another 20 from various right of center parties he will be PM again. It is probably almost the same coalition he has now.

An interesting thing I need to explore. Bibi’s main rival was not from the left it was also from the right. So in a way it shows Israel has transformed entirely from how it was 30 years ago, and much more from how it was 50 years ago when it was a socialist country. Sounds like the center-right/right and religious have about 65% of the country. Would be interesting if Bibi put together a coalition of 80+ seats by uniting all the rival parties. Of the remaining about 8% or so are the Arab parties which means the left in Israel has shriveled into a tiny and fractured ideology with less than 25% support. Hopefully we can get something similar here in November. Just keep the Dems out of the House and Senate and let Trump finish his term in relative peace. He may even be able to advance some of his stalled agenda if the GOP can hold Congress. They have been afraid but if they can win next month perhaps their fears will dissipate.

[JParris]

I’m with you.

So much talk of “exit polls” is ridiculous. The true count is imminent, just relax already.

I guess we live in the age of gotta invent news to get the clicks rather than just report the truth.

[Merrick]

Unless Eisenkot lied amd reaches out to the Arab parties to form a coalition, or alternatively the Arab parties are even willing to work with Natanyahu, there is no mathematical path to a 61 seat coalition. Netanyahu will remain PM and call for another round of elections in the Spring.

To is the *completely* expected result.

[Merrick]

So, it was that way in 2000 also when exiting polls began the nearly two month Bush v. Gore saga?

[Merrick]

You think that’s a USA thing?

[Texas Fossil]

“Netanyahu’s block is now with 62 seats!”

“If those numbers hold, Netanyahu has a path to a majority government.”

[PghBaldy]

Well, they provide content, however dubious, for TV broadcasters, and streamers.

[monkeyshine]

None of it would surprise me. Before the previous election they had 3 elections in just under 3 years. Could not form a government or could not keep one together.

What can happen is that a coalition partner may get their members stripped. New parties are formed all the time over there. So if someone gets a coalition of just 61, strip 2 members away and the government falls. Some of it is ego, there were a lot of little parties this year that didn’t even get enough for 1 seat.

On occasion there has been ‘national unity’ governments, or promises to rotate the PM chair between two major parties. I don’t think that will happen this time there are only 2 significant parties. All the rest are a handful here and a handful there. The religious parties tend to be the key to forming a government and their natural political allies are the right of center parties who give them what they want. They generally do not want to be involved in external affairs they just want to take care of their constituents and run the religious institutions so for the more ambitious politicians they make good coalition partners. Give them their domestic porfolios and they are happy.

[Nervous Tick]

bkmk