With polls closing across Israel, exit polls published by Channel 12 News show that the Likud party has won 37 Knesset seats while the Blue and White party has won 33 seats.The additional good news along with the Likud's results is that in all exit polls released so far, the right-wing coalition got 60 seats, and hopefully could win at least one more. The real bad news is surely that the Joint Arab List got another seat or two, possibly taking from Blue & White. If we're to take a view of a "veteran" party though, what's most interesting is the disaster Labor wound up with coming from their formation of a joint list with the anti-religious, anti-Zionist Meretz party, along with Orly Levy's Gesher party. Evidently, nobody found their combination appealing, and they wound up losing at least 4-5 seats. That's quite a comedown for the Labor party alone. But Gantz's party clearly didn't fare better this time, and it's apparent he's lost whatever "appeal" he had with leftists.
The Joint Arab List won 14 seats, Shas nine seats, United Torah Judaism seven seats, Yamina seven, Labor-Gesher-Meretz seven, and Yisrael Beyteinu six seats.
According to the exit poll, the right-wing bloc received 60 seats, one shy of the 61 majority necessary to form a coalition.
A Channel 13 News exit poll also showed the right-wing bloc winning 60 seats. The poll also found that the Likud won 37 seats, while Blue and White won 32 seats.
According to the Channel 13 poll, the Joint Arab List won 14 seats, Shas nine, Yisrael Beyteinu eight, United Torah Judaism eight, Yamina six, and Labor-Gesher-Meretz six seats.
We'll see what happens within a week, when full results are in. For now, Netanyahu's Likud did very well in their campaigning, drawing the best results in elections since the 1999 election 21 years ago.
