After counting 94% of the votes, the Likud party receives 36 seats, Blue&White 32, the Joint Arab List 16, Shas 9, United Torah Judaism 7, Israel Beiteinu 7, Labor-Gesher-Meretz 7 and Yamina 6 seats.
Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit does not pass the vote threshold. It appears that the voters ignored Ben-Gvir’s promises this time around – his list received only 17,946 votes, or 0.42%.
With the “ordinary” vote count for the 23rd Knesset complete, the central election committee began early Wednesday morning to count double envelopes, containing the votes of IDF soldiers, special access stations for the disabled, diplomats, and prisoners. Sometime on Wednesday, the committee will also figure out how to count the 4,000 or so votes of Israelis suspected of carrying the coronavirus – the health ministry, MDA and the central election committee figured out how to collect those votes, but now they’re seeking volunteers to open the envelopes and look inside.
So far, the real election results show that the rightwing bloc is 58-seats strong, compared with the center-left-Arabs block which has only 55 seats. And if you added these two figures up and didn’t come up with 120, it’s because of a new phenomenon in Israeli electoral history: Avigdor Liberman, whose 7 seat party remains undecided.
Fourth election, anyone?