Two polls published a day apart this week disagree on who is ahead and agree on the only number that matters. Neither Benjamin Netanyahu's camp nor the opposition gets anywhere near 61 seats, the majority line in the 120-seat Knesset, with Israelis due at the ballot box on October 27.

Two polls, one problem

A Zman Yisrael survey released on October 1, conducted by Tatika Research with 500 respondents, gave the parties backing Netanyahu 53 seats and the four Jewish-led opposition parties 49, according to The Times of Israel. A Channel 13 poll a day earlier had the pro-Netanyahu side at 54 against 52 for the opposition's Zionist bloc. In one survey Likud and Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar party were tied at 21 seats each. In the other, Yashar led 21 to 19.

Those gaps are small, but the shift in momentum is not. The Times of Israel noted that nearly every poll for months showed Netanyahu's supporters trailing, and that the latest ones show him pulling level or slightly ahead. The more telling number is emotional rather than arithmetic: in the Zman Yisrael poll, 88 percent of Netanyahu's opponents and nearly 70 percent of his supporters said they were worried about the outcome. When both camps are anxious, nobody believes they are winning.

The seat math the headlines hide

Most coverage frames the race as two blocs, and that framing hides the kingmakers. Arab-led parties won 13 seats in the Zman Yisrael poll and 14 in Channel 13's, oppose Netanyahu, and have almost never joined an Israeli coalition. Add them to the opposition and, as The Times of Israel's Ben Sales wrote on September 30, the anti-Netanyahu total commands a majority in nearly all surveys. On paper, that is a government. In practice, it is a coalition that cannot be formed.

There is a narrower path. Under Knesset rules, if Arab parties abstain and Eisenkot's bloc is larger than Netanyahu's, he could be sworn in with fewer than 61 votes. Sales gave the example of a 55 to 53 split. A minority government like that would be fragile by design, and Hebrew University political scientist Gideon Rahat told The Times of Israel he sees a possible upside, since it would have to build a fresh majority for every bill.

The Arab parties' own numbers are less stable than they look. On October 1, Balad leader Sami Abou Shehadeh ended his candidacy after Israel's High Court urged him to withdraw or face disqualification, The Times of Israel reported, while the party said he would remain its leader. One more variable inside a column of numbers that already swings by a seat or two between pollsters.

Why Netanyahu only needs a stalemate

Eisenkot has to build a government. Netanyahu, as the sitting prime minister, only has to stop one from forming. Political scientist Gayil Talshir told The Times of Israel that he is "trying to ensure that the other side doesn't win." If his bloc falls short, she said, he would work to force another election and get another chance.

Israel has done this before. Shmuel Rosner, a political analyst who edits the Madad polling firm's data, pointed out that two candidates could receive consecutive 42-day mandates to assemble a government, which adds up to almost three months, roughly as long as the campaign itself. And from 2019 to 2022 Israelis voted five times. Repeat elections are not a hypothetical here, they are a muscle the system remembers.

Polls also split along partisan lines. The Jerusalem Post reported this week that i24NEWS had the coalition bloc at 60 seats with Likud at 27, while N12 and Channel 13 showed Eisenkot leading or nearly tied. Netanyahu has repeatedly outperformed surveys, in 1996 and 2015 among other years. Treat any single poll as a weather report, not a forecast.

What could still move voters

The September 30 flydubai incident, in which a copilot allegedly tried to crash a Dubai-to-Tel Aviv flight before passengers and crew subdued him, has already entered the campaign. The Times of Israel analysis argued that Netanyahu is using incumbency to associate himself with the passengers' heroism and to suggest the country is too endangered to gamble on someone new. His opponents, the paper reported, have drawn parallels to October 7, and a separate report said dozens of Omani pilots had flown to Tel Aviv despite a ban, with no Shin Bet background checks. A security scare helps an incumbent only until voters ask who was responsible for security.

The ultra-Orthodox draft remains the sharper fault line. Eisenkot has attacked Netanyahu's deal with coalition partners on exempting many Haredi men from military service, and The Times of Israel noted that Netanyahu's own camp is split on conscription. Cost of living, meanwhile, is the issue voters say is top of mind, according to the same outlet, yet it gets far less airtime than the war.

That war is not background noise. Israel has fought two rounds with Iran in two years, per The Times of Israel, and Washington's standoff with Tehran, in which Trump threatened to "annihilate" Iran hours before it emerged that his envoys had met Iranian officials, keeps security at the center of every argument.

What a deadlock would actually mean

If October 27 produces no clear winner, the real contest starts the next morning. Rosner told The Times of Israel that election day is merely when the playground is laid out for the politicians. A narrow opposition majority could still act fast on a few things even before a government forms, according to the scholars Sales interviewed: voting out Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, an ally of the prime minister, then moving on a state commission of inquiry into October 7. Talshir floated term limits for prime ministers and barring indicted politicians from the role. Netanyahu is on trial for corruption, so the last idea is not abstract.

Israel is not alone in facing a vote this tight. In Brazil, where Lula leads the first round but a runoff looks tied, a few points will also decide a country's direction. The difference is that Brazil's system has a runoff to force a result. Israel's has coalition math, and the math currently points to months of limbo and, as Rosner warned, a bad period stretching into 2027.

The question on October 27 may be less who wins than whether anyone can govern at all.

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