Poll ends in Israel: Polls show Netanyahu’s party as favorite

Opinion polls in Israel on Tuesday suggest this Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies could win enough seats to return to power After three and a half years of political deadlock with a nationalist and sectarian government.

However, the polls are preliminary and the final results may change as votes are counted in the next few hours.

It was the fifth vote in less than four years in Israel, all of which focused on Netanyahu’s eligibility to rule.

A poll of three major Israeli television networks He indicated that Netanyahu and his allies would have a majority in the 120-seat parliament A new government should be formed.

The anti-Netanyahu camp, led by the current acting leader, Yair LabitAccording to the first opinion polls released when polls close at 10:00 pm local time (8:00 pm GMT), there are 54-55 seats.

Lapid’s formation, the centrist Yesh Adit (There Is a Future), averaged 23 seats, its best result, but the coalition of right, center and left parties supporting him did not come together enough to form an anti-Netanyahu front. Support.

More than 6.7 million Israelis were invited to vote today for the fifth time since 2019.The new election appointment does not seem to free the country from instability and political deadlock as neither side, divided along the ideological spectrum, could get a clear majority.

The novelty of these elections was the rise of the Jewish supremacist far-right, which positioned itself as the third-highest-voting force in the religious Zionism movement – ​​openly racist, anti-Arab and homophobic – with between 14 and 15 seats. included in the pro-Netanyahu camp.

This is the best result in the history of what was until a few years ago a fringe movement after the 6 delegates they achieved in the last March 2021 elections.

The Radical orthodox partiesThe coalition with Netanyahu has 17 seats: 10 for Shas, which represents Sephardic and Mizrahi Haredis, and 7 for Torah’s United Judaism, the party of ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazim.

On the other side of the political spectrum, in the anti-Netanyahu camp, the center-right National Unity Alliance, led by current Defense Minister Benny Gantz, brings together 12 deputies with Justice Minister and former Likud member Gideon Saar; While the creation of ultranationalism “Israel is our home” was on the brink of minimum threshold with 4 spaces.

The left recorded one of its worst results, with 5 representatives for Labor and 4 for the progressive and pacifist organization Meretz.

Another unknown of the day was the participation of the Arab community and its organizations that could gain at least 3.25% of the vote to enter the Knesset (Israeli Parliament): Islami Ram Party would have won 5 seats -which goes to the anti-Netanyahu side- and the Hadash-Tal coalition, which does not support any bloc, has 4.

Arab nationalist organization Balad did not pass the election threshold, and neither did Jewish Home, a more moderate religious ultra-nationalist organization linked to the former prime minister. Naftali Bennett.

Despite voter fatigue after voting five times in four years, turnout was exceptionally high at 66.3% at 8:00pm local time (6:00pm GMT) – final figures not yet released. The turnout was recorded in the four previous elections convened between 2019 and 2021 – the highest since 1999 and predictably high.

(With information from AP and EFE)

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