Election officials continued counting absentee ballots on Thursday morning, with results so far showing no clear path to a majority coalition for either Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc of supporting parties or his opponents.
The Central Elections Committee counted some 46,000 ballots overnight that slightly shifted the electoral makeup, with the Islamist Ra’am party losing a seat to left-wing Meretz.
As of Thursday morning, over 4 million votes had been counted, amounting to 91.6% percent of all ballots cast in Tuesday’s election. The Central Elections Committee said it expects to finish the vote count on Friday morning.
The prospect of a governing coalition appeared to hinge on the Ra’am party, which has not committed to either the pro- or anti-Netanyahu blocs. Complicating a potential majority government, right-wing lawmakers in both camps have ruled out basing a coalition on the party’s support, due to what they say is its anti-Zionist stance.
As the vote count currently stands, Netanyahu’s Likud party would win 30 seats in the 120-seat Knesset.
In his bloc of supporters, Shas would win 9 seats, United Torah Judaism, 7, and Religious Zionism, 6. The sum would give Netanyahu’s camp 52 seats, short of a 61-seat majority, even with the potential support of Naftali Bennett’s Yamina faction, with 7.
In the bloc of parties opposed to Netanyahu, Yair Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid party was projected to be the largest party with 17 seats, followed by Benny Gantz’s Blue and White, with 8.
