Benny Gantz’s Blue & White electoral coalition may have just ended Netanyahu’s tenure as Prime Minister.
The Blue & White is projected to have 37 seats to Likud’s 33 seats. Due to low Arab turnout, the Arab parties may be wiped out from the Knesset and left wing Meretz is also in danger of falling out of the Knesset completely.
Of course, any wanna be Prime Minister must put together a 61 seat coalition majority, but the party with the most seats has the first crack at doing so.
Still very early and we won’t know the final party seat counts for a while.
Likud - 33
Blue and White - 37
Labor - 6
Union of Right Wing Parties (URP) - 5
Meretz - 5
Hadash-Ta’al - 6
Ra’am-Balad - 6
United Torah Judaism (UTJ) - 7
Shas - 6
Kulanu - 4
Yisrael Beiteinu - 5
I will say that if those results hold up, Netanyahu does have the votes to put together a coalition if Blue & White fails and it will be difficult for Blue & White to reach 61.
Based on official (but still incomplete results), it appears that Likud and Blue & White are tied, both in vote percentage and seats, both currently at 29.2% and 35 seats.
If this holds up through the finish of the count, Netanyahu, as the incumbent Prime Minister, has the inside track to being the first asked by the Israeli President to form a government and appears to have sufficient support to form a government.
Likud - 35 seats
+
Shas (Ultra-Orthodox) - 8 seats
+
United Torah Judaism (Ultra-Orthodox) - 8 seats
+
United Right (ultra-right, ultra-Zionist) - 5 seats
+
Yisrael Beiteinu (Russian nationalist, secularist) - 5 seats (but they don’t play well with the rabbi’s)
+
Kulanu (centrist, focused more on economic issues) - 4 seats (not a good fit with Likud, would be a potential partner for Blue & White)
The remaining parties are either Arab or left wing and I don’t think Netanyahu has even the slightest interest in a Grand Alliance with Blue & White.
Likud’s 35 plus the Rabbi’s 16 plus the extreme rights 5 and Yisrael Beiteinu’s 5 makes 61. Likud will have to settle the inevitable ****ing contests between the secularists and the Rabbi’s, but it should work.
Again, this all assumes these numbers, currently at 94% of the vote counted, hold up.
97% counted at this point, Likud and Blue & White are still as they were.
Meretz, Kulanu and an Arab ticket remain just barely over the threshold, if any of them fall out, that would result in their seats being redistricted up the scale to surviving parties.
Most importantly for Likud, the Rabbi’s and the far right parties have held on to the seats they had at the earlier point in the count.
Still looking at a Likud government, even if Netanyahu has to run it from a jail cell.
