Historic Arab turnout reshapes Israeli election as polls close

For the first time in Israel’s history, the percentage of eligible Arab voters who cast ballots may have exceeded the turnout rate among Jewish voters.

By World Israel News Staff

Polls closed across Israel at 10 p.m. Tuesday, bringing an end to a historic Election Day that saw voter turnout reach 77.7%, the highest level in more than a quarter-century.

Turnout jumped 7.1 percentage points from the 70.6% recorded in the 2022 election, reaching its highest level since 1999.

With more than 7.3 million Israelis eligible to vote, roughly 5.7 million voters cast ballots in the election for the 26th Knesset.

One of the biggest stories of the night was an extraordinary surge in Arab voter participation.

Turnout in the Arab sector reportedly reached approximately 80%. Preliminary figures indicated that, for the first time in Israel’s history, the percentage of eligible Arab voters who cast ballots may have exceeded the turnout rate among Jewish voters.

The surge appears to have translated into a dramatic increase in Arab representation in the Knesset, according to the first television exit polls.

Channel 12 projected the Joint List winning 11 seats and Ra’am seven, for a combined 18 seats. Kan and Channel 13 each projected the Joint List at 10 seats and Ra’am at seven, for a combined 17.

That would represent a major increase from the outgoing Knesset. In the 2022 election, Ra’am won five seats and Hadash-Ta’al won five, giving the two Arab factions a combined 10 seats. Balad failed to cross the electoral threshold that year.

The difference is politically significant. An Arab representation of 17 or 18 seats would give the sector as many as eight additional mandates compared with the outgoing Knesset, dramatically changing the coalition arithmetic.

That impact was immediately apparent in the preliminary exit polls released when voting ended.

Channel 12 projected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc at 50 seats, compared with 52 for the bloc of Jewish-led parties opposed to him and 18 for the Arab parties. Kan and Channel 13 similarly projected Netanyahu’s bloc at 50, the opposing bloc at 53 and the Arab parties at 17.

Channel 14 produced a considerably stronger result for Netanyahu’s bloc, projecting it at 60 seats, but still one seat short of the 61 needed for an outright Knesset majority. It projected the Arab parties at 17 seats.

The preliminary numbers therefore left neither side with a clear path to a majority and placed the unexpectedly large Arab representation at the center of the post-election political calculations.

The historic national turnout had been apparent from the opening hours of voting.

By 10 a.m., turnout had reached 16.68%, rising to 31.5% at noon and 44.9% by 2 p.m. At 4 p.m., 55.7% of eligible voters had voted, 8.2 percentage points higher than at the same point in 2022.

The election was Israel’s first national vote since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas massacre and the years of war that followed, with national security, responsibility for the failures surrounding Oct. 7, the haredi draft and Israel’s wars against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran dominating much of the campaign.

Netanyahu sought another term in office, while former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot emerged as his principal challenger.

Despite the historic turnout, the first exit polls pointed to another deeply divided Knesset, with no bloc immediately securing the 61 seats needed to govern.

The exit polls are only projections and will be updated throughout the night. The political picture could shift significantly as actual ballots are counted, particularly if parties near the 3.25% electoral threshold move into or out of the Knesset.