Israel’s election campaign has entered its final month with former military chief Gadi Eisenkot leading the party field and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leaning heavily on his long-standing security message. The October 27 vote will be the country’s first general election since the Hamas-led attack of October 2023, an event that shattered confidence in the government’s preparedness and still shapes nearly every argument about leadership. Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar party is ahead in recent surveys, but the race remains too fragmented for either major bloc to claim a straightforward path to power.
A Kan News poll published Sunday put Yashar first with 23 seats and Netanyahu’s Likud second with 21. More important for government formation, the Netanyahu-aligned bloc and the main opposition bloc were tied at 52 seats each, both well short of the 61 needed for a Knesset majority. The same survey found Netanyahu narrowly ahead of Eisenkot on the direct question of who respondents preferred as prime minister, 39% to 38%. Those figures underline the campaign’s central tension: Eisenkot can lead the largest party while Netanyahu retains a personal advantage and a durable base on the right.
Netanyahu has responded with a familiar appeal to voters who see him as the country’s most experienced guardian in a hostile region. Eisenkot’s record as a former army chief and war cabinet member gives the opposition a challenger with his own security credentials, while the loss of his son during the Gaza war has made the contest deeply personal. Yet his advantage is fragile. Yashar slipped by one seat in the Kan survey, and earlier polling has moved within a narrow range as voters reconsider the leading parties. Smaller factions could determine whether either leader can assemble a coalition after ballots are counted.
Polymarket traders placed Eisenkot at about 44.8% to become prime minister after the election, compared with roughly 32.5% for Netanyahu and 15.5% for Naftali Bennett in the latest snapshot. Eisenkot’s price had fallen about 5.7 percentage points over one day while Netanyahu’s rose about three points. Those odds summarize expectations about both the vote and the coalition negotiations that follow; they do not measure party support and cannot establish who will command 61 lawmakers when the next Knesset convenes.
The remaining campaign will test whether Netanyahu can rebuild his security credentials or whether Eisenkot can convert a party lead into a workable governing alliance. Further surveys, televised appearances and decisions by parties near the electoral threshold could change the arithmetic quickly. Even a clear first-place finish would not end the contest on election night. Israel’s president must consult the elected parties and assign a lawmaker the task of forming a government. With the two large blocs currently deadlocked, the decisive phase may begin only after voters have delivered their verdict.
