Israel’s election has not yet settled whether Benjamin Netanyahu will leave office. A Channel Twelve exit poll put the opposition’s Jewish-led bloc ahead of Netanyahu’s bloc, but neither appeared close to a majority without Arab-led parties. That is a tentative picture of the contest, not proof that a new government is ready to take power. The same poll projected 52 seats for the opposition bloc, while Likud was projected to be the largest party. Exit-poll projections are provisional, and final results may differ in the coming days.
The distinction matters because Israeli voters choose parties, not a prime minister directly. Parliament has 120 seats, and a governing coalition needs a majority. After the results, the president asks a member of parliament to try to form a government; the route from election projections to a change of prime minister therefore runs through coalition negotiations. An opposition bloc can lead in an exit poll without having a clear path to assemble a governing majority. The poll’s projected party standings also do not, on their own, establish which parties would work together.
A Polymarket contract puts the chance of Netanyahu being out by the end of the year at 31% as of 5:01 p.m. ET on Oct. 27. Trading over the last day was $81K in trading over the last day. The market’s later contract puts his departure by the end of June at 65% as of 5:01 p.m. ET on Oct. 27, but trading there was just $611 in trading over the last day. The two prices are not interchangeable measures of a settled political outcome: one concerns a nearer deadline, while the later contract has little trading behind it. They show what traders currently believe, not an objective probability or a forecast. Both prices were down 1 point in the last day and down 1 point in the last day, respectively.
The election’s stakes reach beyond who occupies the prime minister’s office. Security, the wars in Gaza and Iran, ultra-Orthodox military conscription and the economic cost of conflict are among the issues shaping the vote. Yet even a change in prime minister and coalition would not necessarily produce a dramatic shift in Israel’s positions on major foreign-policy issues. The contest may determine who negotiates over those questions, but the exit-poll lead alone cannot say what policy a future coalition would pursue.
The central uncertainty is whether the final count confirms the projections and whether any bloc can put together a coalition. The exit poll leaves Netanyahu’s future open: it suggests his bloc is behind, but not that he is certain to go. Until official results and coalition arrangements clarify the picture, the market’s prices remain snapshots of trader belief amid an unresolved political process—not a verdict on who will govern.
