It is clear that there has been a major swing to the Right due to today's elections in Israel, but it is not clear yet how far, and how much this will affect the composition of the next government. Here are the results, according to the major exit polls, by bloc:
| Bloc | Current Knesset | Exit Polls |
| Arab Parties | 10 | 9 |
| Left | 60 | 46-48 |
| Right | 27 | 45 |
| Religious | 23 | 18-20 |
So far, both the polls and early voting results show a clear trend away from the Left and the religious parties towards the Right.
The Arab parties traditionally support the Left but have never served in a government. The religious parties tend to support the Right but normally one or two religious parties can be wooed into a Left-wing government as well.
That means that Tzippi Livni and Kadima may be given the opportunity to create a government, but under much worse conditions than a few months ago when Livni tried to form a government and failed. According to the exit polls she would need at least two religious parties or one major Right-wing party to create a 61-seat majority, which by itself would be a substantial shift to the Right from the current coalition. It would also leave a much more powerful Right-wing opposition than there is in the current Knesset.
A more natural coalition would be a Right/religious coalition but that depends on the final results, who President Shimon Peres chooses to be the first leader to try to form a coalition, and the dynamics of the coalition-building process.
The big question: how similar will the final results be to the exit polls?
All polls in Israel seem to be slanted to the Left. Even massive exit polls with tens of thousands of respondents tend to be wrong by substantially more than the statistical margin of error. Apparently this is due to the political bias of the pollsters, their choice of questions, their lack of ability to reach a truly representative sample, and/or the lack of truthfullness of all the responses.
Sometimes this is noticed, as when Benjamin Netanyahu squeaked out a victory in 1996 after both major exit polls showed he had lost. Sometimes it is not noticed, as in 1992 when an exit poll of 20,000 people showed that the Left (Labor and Meretz) had a majority of 61 seats. In the end they only had 56, which was an error of 8.2%. Even small polls of 500 respondants are supposed to have a margin of error of only 4%; with 20,000 respondants the margin of error should have been close to zero. But the incompetent polling was ignored since the Left still had a "blocking majority" with the Arab parties and went on to create a coalition.
Are tonight's exit polls slanted to the Left as they have been so many times in recent years? If so, Benjamin Netanyahu may again squeak out a victory, as he did in 1996 after both major exit polls showed he had lost. If not, he may still get a chance to form a government, either now or later.
So far (at 1:30 AM Israel time) the early results show an even bigger lead for the Right/Religious bloc and an even narrower lead for Kadima over Likud, but it is going to be a long night before the final results are in.
