Diverging results show the ruling Likud party at best in a tie, but it will take far more than a simple win for anyone to form a governing coalition
With voting booths closed, exit poll results in Israel indicate something of a dead heat between the party of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and that of his challenger, former military chief and political novice Benny Gantz.
Out of the Knesset’s 120 seats, one of the country’s three major TV stations gave Gantz’s Blue and White party 37, compared to 33 for Netanyahu’s Likud. Another gave Blue and White 37 to the Likud’s 36, while the third projected a tie, at 36 seats each.
The smoke will start clearing in the morning, when a sufficient number of precincts have reported in with concrete results. Even then, the official outcome will be announced only later in the week – although the results of the exit polls elicited cheers and jubilation at the Tel Aviv venue where Gantz’s supporters had gathered, and a much more somber mood among Likud supporters.
Still, Dr. Ofer Kenig, a political scientist and research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, told The Media Line that some 250,000 votes expected from soldiers had yet to be counted, and that “if anyone is to benefit [from those votes], it’s the right-wing bloc.”
He also noted that historically speaking, Likud voters tend to vote later in the day, even in the last two hours, meaning that the exit polls, which wrap up a bit earlier in order to give pollsters time to digest the results, don’t necessarily include their voice.
“I think that if Gantz or the Center-Left wanted a good reason to be happy, they should have recorded wider gaps” over the Right, Kenig stated.
As they say, though, it ain’t over till the fat lady sings, and the fat lady in this case is Israel’s president, the relatively svelte Reuven Rivlin, who might be called the Israeli “Electoral College,” where the outright winner could well be the one who lagged behind in popular votes.
Once the official tally is in, party leaders will report to Rivlin on who they favor getting the first crack at forming a government. The president will then do some calculations to determine who – Gantz or Netanyahu – has the best chance. On that matter, the exit polls were as divergent on Right versus Left as they were on the battle between Blue and White and the Likud.
Conventional wisdom says Netanyahu has the better chance, but there will be one or two of what might best be called “floating parties” that would be willing to drift this way or that – depending, of course, on what they can get out of the inevitable horse trading.
Kenig added that Rivlin will have a “tough call to make,” although two of the exit polls indicate enough strength on the Right, meaning “he won’t have much discretion even if Blue and White were to receive one more seat” in the final count.
“Judging from history,” he said, “if anything changes, it’s always in favor of the Right.”