After 99% counted, PM still on verge of majority

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc of right-wing and religious parties remained on the edge of obtaining a blocking majority in the next Knesset late Tuesday night after the Central Election Committee completed counting 4,251,835 votes from 10,552 of the 10,631 regular polling stations, some 99% of all polling stations.

Among the votes that have already been counted, Netanyahu’s Likud won 36 seats, which together with Shas’s 10, United Torah Judaism’s seven and Yamina’s six would be 59 – two seats short of the 61 MKs needed for a majority.

Blue and White had 32 seats, according to the preliminary vote count, the Joint List 15, LaborGesher-Meretz seven and Yisrael Beytenu seven.

Absentee ballots from IDF soldiers, prisoners, diplomats and other emissaries were to be counted Tuesday night. Special ballots of those quarantined due to possible exposure to the coronavirus who voted in special polling station will be counted in a tent outside the Knesset on Wednesday morning.

The remaining three percent of polling stations are undergoing extra procedures to verify their accuracy due to various problems, and their results will only be available on Sunday. Legally, the final results do not need to be published until next Monday.

Altogether there are some 400,000 votes that have yet to be counted. Only after all the votes are counted will calculations be made on vote-sharing agreements and application of the Bader-Ofer surplus-vote allocation system, which could both alter the final results.

There were 6,453,255 eligible voters in regular polling stations, and 71% of these people voted.

Each of the 120 Knesset mandates currently represents approximately 34,600 votes.