Israel’s Central Elections Committee published its first counted ballots early Wednesday, showing 2,670 votes from just 15 polling stations. The opening batch is far too small to determine a national winner, project Knesset seats or resolve the conflicting election-night exit polls.
The committee’s national-results page was timestamped 12:19 a.m. on October 28 in Israel, equivalent to 6:19 p.m. Tuesday in New York. It listed 2,661 valid votes and nine invalid votes, compared with 7,331,981 eligible voters nationwide.
Likud had 719 votes, or 27.02% of valid ballots in that first batch, according to the official tally. The Religious Zionism-Zehut list followed with 448 votes, or 16.84%, while Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar had 442 votes, or 16.61%.
The count has begun, but the sample is tiny
The new figures mark a change from the committee’s earlier “Waiting for the vote count” message. They are actual counted ballots rather than estimates drawn from exit polls, but they cover only the first 15 polling stations reported on the national page.
The committee’s table does not establish that those stations represent the country as a whole. The vote shares in this opening batch should therefore not be read as a forecast of each party’s final national support. A party’s position can change sharply as additional polling stations report.
Otzma Yehudit had 223 votes, or 8.38%, and the Democrats had 215, or 8.08%, the committee reported. Naftali Bennett’s Beyachad had 173 votes, or 6.50%, and Shas had 128, or 4.81%.
The Reservists-Economic list had 93 votes, Yisrael Beytenu 85 and People of Israel 78 in the same batch. United Torah Judaism had 27. These are early vote counts, not decisions about which parties will enter the next Knesset.
Counted ballots are separate from exit-poll projections
The first official batch does not settle the disagreement between the broadcasters’ election-night estimates. Channel 13’s published exit poll had placed the opposition bloc at 53 seats and Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc at 50, with 17 for the Arab parties. Channel 14’s published exit poll had put Netanyahu’s bloc at 60, the opposition at 43 and the Arab parties at 17.
Neither of those projections gave a main bloc the 61 seats needed for a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. The official opening count should not be converted into a new seat projection or used to declare one of those exit polls correct.
The Central Elections Committee says final results will be published in the official record by November 4 and may change until then. The next meaningful development will be a much broader tally from additional polling stations, with its size and timestamp made clear alongside the party totals.
JBizNews Desk | Jerusalem
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