The polls closed at 10:00 PM and the major Israeli media [
here,
here and
here] have published their exit polls and initial election returns which show Tzipi Livni and Kadima with a slim 2 Knesset seat lead over the Likud and its party leader Binyamin Netanyahu.
The exit polls indicate that Kadima won 28-30 Knesset seats while the Likud garnered 27-28 Knesset seats. Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party won 14-15 seats while Ehud Barak and the Labor party showed 13 seats on all of the exit polls. Shas finished fifth winning between 9-10 seats.
The
early voting returns (as of 1:10 AM in Israel) reflect the same pattern as the exit polls, but with an even narrower gap between Kadima and Likud, and slightly stronger results for the Right/Religious bloc at the expense of the Left/Arab bloc: Kadima has 28 seats; Likud, 27; Yisrael Beiteinu, 16; Labor, 13 and Shas, 11.
The returns to this point show a potential right-wing coalition block of 67 Knesset seats and the strong possibility that Netanyahu and Likud would likely be designated to form the government by President Shimon Peres, although Likud finished 2nd to Kadima in the voting. Ynet's Attila Somfalvi, however writes of the possibility that the election results could compel a
prime ministerial power-sharing rotation between Netanyahu and Livni recalling the
rotation which followed the 1984 election between Likud's Yitzchak Shamir and Labor's then leader Shimon Peres.
