Exit polls predicted Tuesday evening that former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be able to form a majority bloc and return to power in a new coalition government, according to Israeli news sources.
Netanyahu’s party, the Likud, looked set to be the largest party, with other parties on the right winning enough seats to join it in a hypothetical coalition government.
The Times of Israel reported:
The Kan broadcaster (Channel 11), in its exit poll, also projects that former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be able to build a coalition majority with his Likud and allied parties.
It puts the Netanyahu-led right-wing / ultra-Orthodox bloc on 62 seats in the 120-member Knesset. The outgoing coalition, led by Prime Minister Yair Lapid, is projected to win 54 seats.
Other channels reported similar results. Supporters of Netanyahu chanted “Bibi is back!” at a victory celebration as they watched the exit polls being reported.
Netanyahu has struggled to build coalition governments in the previous elections since the spring of 2019, usually falling just one or two seats short of a majority. That left him in power until last year, when a coalition of smaller parties was barely able to unseat him.
Exit polls are notoriously unreliable in Israel, but since they tend to underestimate right-wing support, Netanyahu’s victory looks more likely to solidify than to erode over the next several hours, as results continue to be reported from polling stations.
Israeli news websites, which — as in the U.S. — tend to be left-leaning, were solemn in the days leading up to the election, suggesting that journalists knew Netanyahu had the inside edge on victory. He will still face the challenge of forging a coalition agreement.
Netanyahu’s return to power is one of the more remarkable events in Israel political history — and follows the “comeback” arc that American supporters of Donald Trump would like to see: a strong leader, undermined by the Deep State, who returned to power.
Other interesting results in the election include a strong third-place finish for the far-right Oztma Yehudit as part of the Religious Zionism ticket. Balad, an Arab nationalist party, may have finished below the 3.25% threshold to qualify for a Knesset seat.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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