Israel’s October 27 election is shaping up as a high-stakes test of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership, with voters weighing his handling of the October 7, 2023, attack and the wars that followed. The outcome will depend not just on the biggest parties, but also on smaller factions that could determine who gets to govern.
Israelis vote for parties rather than individual candidates. The parties must then negotiate coalition agreements to secure a majority in the 120-member Knesset, or parliament. No party has ever won an outright majority in Israel’s 78-year history, making coalition arithmetic central to every election.
