Final Israel Election Votes Tallied: Likud at 36, Right-Wing Bloc at 58

TEL AVIV – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party gained 36 seats while the main challenger Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party received 33, putting the right-wing bloc at 58 and missing a majority by 3 seats, according to the final tally published by the Central Elections Committee Thursday evening. 

Some 4,612,007 votes were counted from polling stations around the country, including special coronavirus polling booths. Six polling stations were not included in the final tally because of accuracy issues, but they are not expected to influence the results one way or another. Although the results are final, the official results will on be published on Monday.

The results were as follows:

• Likud: 36
• Blue and White: 33
• Joint List: 15
• Shas: 9
• United Torah Judaism: 7
• Yisrael Beytenu: 7
• Labor-Gesher-Meretz: 7
• Yamina: 6

The right-wing bloc comprised of 58 seats, three less than a majority needed to form a government.

Shortly before the final tally was released, the Likud party petitioned the election committee to delay its publication until all protocol documents at polling booths were filed to the committee for extensive review.

“The Likud expects that until these documents are not duly handed over and reviewed for any errors, the election committee will refrain from publishing the results,” the party said in a statement.

On Wednesday evening the CEC announced that 6 polling booths, amounting to some 4,000 votes, would need review after concerns were raised that there were some errors in the count.

The final turnout in Monday’s elections was 71.46%, an increase from September’s election in which 69.8 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots. 25,053 of the 4,612,007 votes were rendered invalid. The electoral threshold, which is 3.25 percent, stood at 149,004 votes.