Israel Votes on 27 October: Netanyahu Trails in Polls but Coalition Math Is the Real Test

What the 27 October Vote Is Really About: A Rare Full Term, a War-Weary Electorate

Israel will hold national elections on 27 October — the first since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack and the wars that followed. The vote closes a rare full four-year parliamentary term; in Israeli history, only a handful of Knessets have run their complete mandate instead of collapsing into early elections.

The campaign starts with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a weak position. Reuters-cited polling shows he would likely lose, with his reputation badly damaged by the 7 October security failure and by policy disputes over religious and state issues. Yet the same surveys show no rival party or candidate with strong momentum, and Netanyahu has already won elections from low ratings several times before.

His main challengers are former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, whose son was killed in Gaza and whose image as a measured security figure contrasts sharply with Netanyahu's corruption trials; a cross-spectrum alliance of former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, who together unseated Netanyahu in 2021; and ex-defence minister Avigdor Liberman, a former Netanyahu ally who broke with him in 2018 over what he called a too-soft line on Palestinian militants.

Israel's parliamentary system is proportional: 120 seats, a 3.25% electoral threshold, and no party in the country's history has won a majority outright. Coalitions are therefore the norm, small parties hold outsized leverage, and coalition discipline usually proves fragile. The 2021 Bennett–Lapid government, built with liberal, conservative and Arab-Islamist parties, lasted just 18 months. That structural fragility is why the 27 October result may take weeks to translate into a government.

Why Netanyahu Can Still Win: Fragmentation, Coalition Math and Weak Alternatives

The Netanyahu Paradox: Low Polls, But a Real Path Back

Polling points to a Netanyahu defeat, but the only poll that matters in Israel is the one that produces a coalition. Because no party has ever won a 120-seat majority outright, voters choose a parliament and parties then bargain for a prime minister. That mechanic can carry Netanyahu past a personal unpopularity gap — he has already done it once, consolidating the most right-wing government in Israeli history in 2022 after years of deadlock.

Fragmentation Favours the Kingmakers

The 3.25% threshold means a party needs only about four seats to enter the Knesset, which makes small factions disproportionately influential over who becomes premier and for how long. The story is a reminder of how that plays out: Netanyahu's political survival has often depended on ultra-Orthodox parties, and their exemption from compulsory military service has repeatedly split Israeli society. Two such parties — United Torah Judaism and Shas — left the government in 2024, and whether they can be brought back will help decide the next coalition's fate.

A Weak Opposition Is Also a Risk

Eisenkot, the Bennett–Lapid alliance and Liberman are all running with low public enthusiasm. A government does not need to be loved to win, but it does need to agree on a shared agenda — and the 2021 experiment showed how quickly Bennett and Lapid's coalition dissolved under pressure. If the challengers cannot hold together long enough to form a government, another deadlock, and another early election, is a realistic outcome.

What a New Government Would Inherit

Whoever emerges will immediately face the same portfolio that broke this term: managing the war's aftermath in Gaza, the security threat from Hezbollah and Iran, and the domestic religious-state tensions that helped destabilise Netanyahu's current coalition. The first decisions of any new government will be on these files, meaning the election changes personnel before it changes policy direction.

What to Watch After the Ballot: Coalition Talks, Draft Exemptions and the War Agenda

For observers, regional partners and businesses exposed to Israel, the 27 October vote is best tracked as a process, not a single event:

• Treat the date as a starting point, not an endpoint. With a fragmented proportional parliament, forming a government can take weeks of post-election bargaining, as the 2021 experience showed.
• Watch how the ultra-Orthodox parties behave after the vote. Their departure from the coalition in 2024 and the unresolved military-service exemption make them the most likely kingmakers — and the most likely cause of another collapse.
• Monitor the war agenda immediately after the vote. The next government must take early decisions on Gaza, Hezbollah and Iran regardless of its composition, which sets the regional and security backdrop for business activity.
• Expect possible timeline changes. Israeli practice allows early dissolution, and the October date could shift if the security situation deteriorates or a coalition forms ahead of schedule.