Israel Election 2026, Hung Knesset, PR vs FPTP: CLAT GK

📑 On this page

Israel voted on 27 October. Two days later, with about 94% of ballots counted, nobody had won. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc was on 53 seats, former army chief Gadi Eisenkot's opposition bloc on 48, and two Arab-led parties on 19 between them. A government needs 61.

So the parties that Israeli politics has mostly kept at arm's length now hold the numbers that could decide who governs. And the opposition is arguing with itself about whether to take their help.

For a CLAT aspirant, this is a live lesson in how votes become power. Israel uses proportional representation, the Lok Sabha first-past-the-post, and India's President a third method, the single transferable vote, which CLAT 2023 asked about. The same week, a UN General Assembly vote on Cuba showed that a big majority can still bind nobody.

🎯 In a nutshell

Israel elected its 26th Knesset on 27 October. With about 94.4% counted (11:09 am Israel time, 29 October), the blocs stood at 53 (Netanyahu), 48 (Eisenkot) and 19 (Arab-led parties). Majority: 61 of 120.
Results are not final. Hundreds of thousands of special ballots were still being counted. President Isaac Herzog gets the official results next week, then consults the parties.
Israel uses nationwide party-list proportional representation with a 3.25% threshold. India's Lok Sabha uses first-past-the-post; the President, Vice-President and Rajya Sabha use STV.
The Joint List and Ra'am could be kingmakers, but Eisenkot has resisted an alliance and Netanyahu rules it out. In 2021 Ra'am became the first Arab-led party in a governing coalition.
The UN General Assembly called for an end to the US embargo on Cuba for the 34th time, 130-17-25 (165 in favour in 2025). India voted yes. It is non-binding.

📌 What CLAT actually expects

A Current Affairs passage would describe the result in plain words, then test careful reading of the numbers and linked GK: FPTP vs PR vs STV, which Indian elections use which, and why a General Assembly resolution does not bind. The Arab-parties debate could equally become an English or Logical Reasoning passage.

The backstory

How Israel votes

The Knesset is Israel's parliament: 120 members, elected for four years, though early elections are common. Israel has no constituencies. The whole country is one electorate, and each voter chooses a single party list, not a candidate. Each list ranks its candidates in a fixed order decided by the party. This is called a closed list.

Seats are shared out in proportion to votes among the lists that cross the electoral threshold of 3.25% of valid votes. Leftover votes are handled with a formula based on the D'Hondt method, which slightly favours bigger parties. Two lists can sign a surplus-vote agreement, pooling leftover votes so one of them may win an extra seat. On 29 October, one seat was swinging between the two Arab lists on theirs, by about 1,200 votes.

The threshold has crept up: 1% until 1988, 1.5% from 1992 to 2003, then 2%, until the Knesset raised it to 3.25% in March 2014 (Israel Democracy Institute). In the latest count, two lists were below it at 2.67% and 1.63%, so their votes elect no one.

Who becomes Prime Minister

Israelis do not vote for a Prime Minister. After the results are published, the President, a mostly ceremonial head of state, consults every elected party and gives the task of forming a government to the member most likely to win the Knesset's confidence. Usually that is the largest party's leader, but he is not bound to choose him.

1
First attempt
The chosen member gets 28 days to form a government; the President can extend this by up to 14 days.
2
Second attempt
If that fails, the President may give the task to another member, who gets 28 days with no extension.
3
Last chance
If that also fails, Knesset members have 21 days to ask that the task go to a member who agrees to try. That person gets 14 days.
4
Fresh election
If no request is made or the final attempt fails, the Knesset is treated as dissolved and an election must be held within 90 days.

Meanwhile the outgoing government stays on as a caretaker: it keeps services running but cannot make major policy changes. A long stalemate may therefore suit Netanyahu.

A country without one written constitution

Unlike India, Israel has no single written constitution. The first Knesset did not adopt one. Instead, on 13 June 1950, it adopted the Harari Resolution: the constitution would be built chapter by chapter, each chapter a separate Basic Law, and together they would make up the constitution. That is why you will read about Israel's 'Basic Laws' rather than its constitution.

Arab citizens and the 2021 precedent

Arab citizens, descendants of Palestinians who stayed after Israel's creation, are around 20% of the population (AFP). Their parties have usually sat in opposition. In 2021, Ra'am (the United Arab List) became the first Arab-led party to join a governing coalition, in the short-lived Bennett-Lapid government.

The Joint List, first formed in 2015, now unites Hadash, Balad and Ta'al under Yousef Jabareen; Ra'am, led by Mansour Abbas, ran alone. Before the vote, the Netanyahu-led bloc tried to bar Arab parties from contesting; the Supreme Court struck that down.

What happened

The numbers so far

The partial count below is from Israel National News: official results at 11:09 am Israel time on 29 October (2:39 pm IST), about 94.4% counted. Hindustan Times, at about 93%, had the same bloc totals.

Bloc	Party (leader)	Projected seats
Netanyahu's coalition (53)	Likud (Benjamin Netanyahu)	26
	Otzma Yehudit	7
	Shas	7
	United Torah Judaism	7
	Religious Zionism and Zehut	6
Eisenkot's opposition (48)	Yashar (Gadi Eisenkot)	21
	Together (Naftali Bennett)	12
	The Democrats (Yair Golan)	8
	Yisrael Beytenu	7
Arab-led parties (19)	Joint List (Yousef Jabareen)	11
	Ra'am (Mansour Abbas)	8

→ scroll to see more

All of this is provisional. Earlier counts differed: The Hindu's editorial (85.6% counted) had the Joint List on 12 and Ra'am on 7; The Indian Express (Wednesday afternoon) had the blocs at 54, 47 and 19. Double-envelope ballots from soldiers, diplomats and others voting away from home were still being counted: over 400,000 says Israel National News, over 500,000 says HT. Seats could still shift.

Turnout was 77.7%, the highest since 1999, per Israel National News. Herzog says he will receive the official results "next week" from Justice Noam Sohlberg, the Supreme Court judge heading the Central Elections Committee, and only then begin consultations.

Kingmakers who may not be invited

Neither bloc reaches 61 without crossing a line it drew itself. Netanyahu campaigned on "Either the Right or Palestine" and calls a coalition with Arab parties "a shame and disgrace". Eisenkot has resisted allying with them, and his camp includes right-wingers who reject it outright.

The Arab parties differ too. The Joint List is unlikely to join a coalition but offers a "safety net" from outside to any government that removes Netanyahu. Ra'am is open to joining; Abbas promised changes, "not just empty talk". That leaves four paths, as HT and AFP report:

A minority government under Eisenkot, kept alive by Arab parties voting for it or abstaining from outside. Few observers expect it to last.
A coalition including Ra'am, as in 2021, at the risk of losing right-wing partners.
A Netanyahu-Eisenkot unity government. Eisenkot has ruled it out, and the 2020 Netanyahu-Gantz rotation fell apart after a year.
Another election, possibly early next year, with Netanyahu as caretaker. Israel held five elections between April 2019 and November 2022.

There is noise too. Netanyahu claims the election was "stolen" by Arab parties; police said there was no investigative or intelligence evidence for this. Separately, Justice Sohlberg asked the Shin Bet to examine allegations of foreign interference, which have not been established.

Votes into seats: three systems, three results

Every democracy turns millions of votes into a few hundred seats. How it does so shapes everything that follows.

	First-past-the-post (FPTP)	Party-list PR	Single transferable vote (STV)
Where	India's Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies	Israel's Knesset	India: President, Vice-President, Rajya Sabha (state seats), Legislative Councils
You vote for	One candidate in your constituency	One party's ranked list, nationwide	Candidates, ranked 1, 2, 3 by preference
Who wins	Most votes in the constituency, even under 50%	Seats in proportion to national vote share, above a threshold	Those reaching a quota; surplus and eliminated votes transfer to next preferences
Strength	Clear local MP; usually a decisive majority	Parliament mirrors the vote	Few wasted votes
Weakness	Seat share can be far from vote share	Many parties, coalitions, deadlock	Complex counting

→ scroll to see more

A simple way to see the difference: imagine a party that wins 30% of the vote in every constituency while a rival wins 35% everywhere. Under FPTP, the first party could win zero seats. Under list PR, it would win roughly 30% of them. Neither result is "wrong"; each system chooses what to value.

India's Constitution writes STV into indirect elections. The President is elected by "proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote", by secret ballot; so are the Vice-President and each State's Rajya Sabha members, chosen by its elected MLAs. Rajya Sabha voting has been by open ballot since a 2003 amendment, upheld in Kuldip Nayar v. Union of India (2006).

The debate

Two arguments run at once: whether to govern with Arab parties' support, and whether proportional representation itself is the problem.

Question	One side	The other side
Should the opposition govern with Arab parties' support?	Yes. They won their seats like everyone else; shutting out a fifth of citizens' representatives is the real distortion. The Hindu's editorial urges a broad coalition with them; The Telegraph calls Jews and Arabs working together what Israel needs.	Not now. Eisenkot's right-wing allies reject it. The Indian Express notes such a government would face pressure from its own voters; HT says it could be anathema to Jewish-led parties after 7 October 2023.
Coalition partners or outside support?	Outside support (the "safety net") allows a change of government without anyone crossing a red line.	A minority government depends on every vote, every day; few observers think it would survive long (AFP).
Is proportional representation the problem?	PR mirrors voters closely. Critics of the 2014 increase, per the Israel Democracy Institute, said a high threshold distorts voters' will and may cut Arab representation.	PR carried too far fragments parliament. Supporters of the increase said it would push small parties to merge and steady government.
Would FPTP fix it?	Constituency winners usually produce a clear majority and a clear government.	It can hand a majority of seats to a party most voters did not choose.

→ scroll to see more

Netanyahu lost. I know how to count to 120.

— Yair Golan, leader of The Democrats, on X, 28 October 2026 (as quoted by The Indian Express)

Golan counts the opposition and Arab parties together, the very step his allies have not agreed to. Political scientist Gideon Rahat told AFP that perhaps everyone lost except the Arab parties, and even they may not be able to use their success.

Settled: no bloc has 61, and Netanyahu remains caretaker until a government forms. Contested: whether Arab parties should be partners, and whether PR's representativeness is worth its instability. Unknown: the final seat count, whom Herzog asks first, and whether Israel heads to yet another election.

Also this week at the UN: the Cuba vote

On 28 October the UN General Assembly adopted a Cuban-sponsored resolution calling for an end to the US economic, commercial and financial embargo on Cuba, for the 34th time. The Assembly has made this call since 1992. The embargo was first imposed in 1960, after Fidel Castro came to power.

Year	In favour	Against	Abstentions
2025	165	7	12
2026	130	17	25

→ scroll to see more

Another 21 countries did not vote (UPI). Support fell by 35 after what Cuba called an intense US campaign: Colombia switched to no, and Germany, Italy and Latvia abstained. India voted in favour; its diplomat Soumya Nair said India hopes "the embargo will be lifted at the earliest".

The GK link: under the UN Charter the General Assembly makes recommendations, one vote per member, with two-thirds of those present and voting needed on important questions. Only Security Council decisions bind members. So 130 votes make a statement, not a law.

Facts you must know

Item	What to remember
Knesset	Israel's parliament; 120 members; four-year term; majority = 61. The 2026 vote elects the 26th Knesset
Israel's electoral system	Nationwide closed party-list proportional representation; no constituencies; leftover seats by a D'Hondt-based formula; surplus-vote agreements allowed
Electoral threshold	3.25% of valid votes since March 2014 (was 2%; earlier 1.5% and 1%)
Forming a government	President consults parties, picks a member: 28 days + up to 14; then a second member (28 days); then 21 days for MKs to nominate (14 days); else election within 90 days
Head of state / government	President Isaac Herzog (mostly ceremonial) / Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (now caretaker)
Constitution	No single written document; Basic Laws, built chapter by chapter under the Harari Resolution of 13 June 1950
Central Elections Committee	Runs Israel's elections; headed by Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg
2021 precedent	Ra'am (United Arab List, leader Mansour Abbas): first Arab-led party in a governing coalition (Bennett-Lapid government)
Joint List	Alliance of Arab-majority parties first formed in 2015; in 2026 Hadash, Balad and Ta'al; leader Yousef Jabareen
India: FPTP	Lok Sabha: single-member territorial constituencies (Article 81); most votes wins
India: STV	President (Art. 55(3), secret ballot); Vice-President (Art. 66(1)); Rajya Sabha state seats (Art. 80(4), open ballot since 2003); Legislative Councils (Art. 171(4))
UN General Assembly	193 members, one vote each; makes recommendations (Art. 10); two-thirds of those present and voting on important questions (Art. 18)
UN Security Council	15 members, 5 permanent; its decisions bind all members (Art. 25)
Cuba resolution 2026	34th call to end the US embargo (first imposed 1960; called for since 1992): 130-17-25; India in favour

→ scroll to see more

⚠️ Common confusions

President vs Prime Minister in Israel: the President is head of state and picks who gets the first shot at forming a government; he does not govern. Largest party ≠ government: Likud leads, but the President can choose anyone likely to win 61. List PR vs STV: both are proportional, but in list PR you vote for a party list; in STV you rank candidates. CLAT 2023 asked how India's President is elected: PR by STV, secret ballot. Secret vs open ballot: the presidential election is secret; Rajya Sabha elections are open. 3.25%, not 3.5% or 5%: and it applies to valid votes nationwide. Projected vs final: the 53-48-19 split is a partial count; official results go to the President next week. UNGA vs UNSC: an Assembly resolution is a recommendation, however large the majority; Security Council decisions bind. Abstentions do not count as 'present and voting'.

How CLAT could test this

An original CLAT-style passage, then five questions: two from the passage, three on linked static GK.

🧩 Worked example

Israelis went to the polls on 27 October, and two days later the country still did not know who would govern it. With well over nine-tenths of the ballots counted, the bloc around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood at 53 seats in the 120-member Knesset, the opposition bloc led by former army chief Gadi Eisenkot at 48, and two Arab-led parties at 19 between them. A government needs the confidence of 61 members. Nobody had them. To an Indian reader, the arithmetic can look strange. In a Lok Sabha election, the country is divided into constituencies, and in each one the candidate with the most votes wins, even if most voters chose someone else. Small swings in votes can therefore produce large swings in seats, and a party with a comfortable lead in votes often ends up with a commanding majority in the House. Israel has no constituencies at all. The whole country votes as one, each voter picks a party list, and seats are shared out roughly in proportion to votes. A party that wins about a fifth of the vote gets about a fifth of the seats. There is one filter. A list must cross 3.25 per cent of the valid votes to enter the Knesset; below that, its votes elect no one. Supporters of the hurdle say it discourages tiny parties and makes coalitions easier to build. Critics say it wastes votes and falls hardest on smaller communities, which is one reason Arab parties have at times merged into joint lists. Proportional systems rarely hand one party a majority, so coalitions are the norm, and that gives smaller parties leverage. This time the leverage sits with parties that many Jewish-led parties have long refused to sit with. The opposition leader has resisted an alliance with them; the Prime Minister campaigned on warnings that his rivals would bring Arabs into power. A left-wing ally of the opposition replied that a majority is a majority, and that votes should not be sorted by the voter's community. In 2021 an Arab party did join a governing coalition for the first time, but that government was short-lived. What happens next belongs partly to the President, a largely ceremonial head of state who, after consulting every party, chooses the member best placed to form a government. That member gets 28 days, extendable by 14. If successive attempts fail, Israel votes again, and in the meantime the outgoing government carries on as a caretaker. Whether proportional representation is producing a parliament that mirrors the country, or one that cannot govern it, is a question Israel asked through five elections between 2019 and 2022, and is asking again now.

1. Which of the following statements is supported by the passage?

AIn Israel, the party with the most votes automatically forms the government

BA list that wins 3 per cent of the valid votes in Israel gets no seats in the Knesset

CIn a Lok Sabha election, a candidate needs more than half the votes in a constituency to win

DNo Arab party has ever been part of an Israeli governing coalition

▸ Show solution

Answer: B. The passage says a list must cross 3.25 per cent of valid votes, and below that its votes elect no one; 3 per cent is below the line, so B follows. A is wrong: the President picks the member best placed to win the Knesset's confidence. C contradicts the passage, which says the candidate with the most votes wins even if most voters chose someone else. D contradicts the 2021 example.

🧩 Worked example

2. Which of the following can most reasonably be inferred from the passage?

AUnder first-past-the-post, a party's share of seats can be much larger than its share of votes

BProportional representation usually gives one party a clear majority

CRaising Israel's threshold would increase the number of parties in the Knesset

DIsrael's President can choose the Prime Minister without consulting the parties

▸ Show solution

Answer: A. The passage says small swings in votes can produce large swings in seats under FPTP, and that a comfortable lead in votes often becomes a commanding majority. That means seat share can outrun vote share, so A is a fair inference. B reverses the passage, which says PR rarely gives one party a majority. C runs against the stated purpose of the threshold, which is to discourage tiny parties. D contradicts the passage: the President chooses after consulting every party.

🧩 Worked example

3. The passage contrasts the Lok Sabha with Israel's party-list system. India also uses a third method, proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote. In which of the following is it NOT used?

AElection of the President of India

BElection of the Vice-President of India

CElection of Rajya Sabha members by the elected members of State Legislative Assemblies

DElection of members of the Lok Sabha

▸ Show solution

Answer: D. Articles 55(3), 66(1) and 80(4) of the Constitution prescribe proportional representation by the single transferable vote for the President, the Vice-President and Rajya Sabha members from the States. The Lok Sabha is elected from single-member territorial constituencies, where the candidate with the most votes wins: first-past-the-post. Remember too that the presidential vote is by secret ballot, while Rajya Sabha voting has been by open ballot since 2003.

🧩 Worked example

4. Israel has no single written constitution. Its constitutional framework rests mainly on:

AThe Balfour Declaration

BA UN General Assembly resolution adopted before Israel's founding

CBasic Laws passed by the Knesset chapter by chapter, under a 1950 Knesset resolution

DA constitution adopted in 1948 and later suspended

▸ Show solution

Answer: C. Under the Harari Resolution of 13 June 1950, the Knesset decided to build the constitution chapter by chapter, each chapter a separate Basic Law, so C is right. A and B are documents from before the state was founded, not its constitution, and no constitution was adopted in 1948, so D is wrong.

🧩 Worked example

5. In the same week, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for an end to the US embargo on Cuba by 130 votes to 17, with 25 abstentions. Yet the United States is not legally obliged to comply. Why?

AThe resolution did not get a two-thirds majority of members present and voting

BGeneral Assembly resolutions are recommendations; under the UN Charter, members are bound to carry out decisions of the Security Council, not of the Assembly

CThe United States used its veto in the General Assembly

DOnly resolutions adopted unanimously by the General Assembly bind member states

▸ Show solution

Answer: B. Article 10 of the Charter lets the Assembly make recommendations, while Article 25 binds members to accept and carry out Security Council decisions, so B is right. A is wrong on the numbers: abstentions do not count as 'present and voting', so 130 of 147 is well over two-thirds. C is wrong because the veto exists only in the Security Council. D is invented; even a unanimous Assembly resolution is a recommendation.

Connect the dots

International affairs

More world current affairs and the static GK behind it.

Current Affairs & GK

National affairs and polity

Elections, Parliament and the President for GK.

Current Affairs & GK

CLAT 2023 paper

See the question on how India's President is elected.

Practice

Inference and conclusion

Practise drawing only what a passage supports.

English

Strengthen and weaken

Test the stability vs representation argument.

Logical Reasoning

Test yourself under exam conditions

Take a full-length CLAT mock with a Current Affairs and GK section built like this one.

Take a free CLAT mock

Sources

Frequently asked questions

What is the result of the Israel election 2026?

Results are not final. With about 94.4% of votes counted on 29 October, Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc had 53 seats, Gadi Eisenkot's opposition bloc 48 and the Arab-led parties 19, in the 120-seat Knesset. No bloc has the 61 seats needed for a majority. Likud is the largest party with 26 seats, followed by Yashar with 21.

How many seats are needed for a majority in the Knesset?

61 of the 120 seats. Because seats are shared in proportion to votes, no single party has won such a majority in modern Israeli elections, so governments are coalitions.

What is the electoral threshold in Israel?

A party list must win at least 3.25% of valid votes nationwide to enter the Knesset. The threshold was raised from 2% in March 2014.

Who decides who will form Israel's next government?

The President, currently Isaac Herzog, consults all parties elected to the Knesset after the official results and asks the member most likely to command a majority to form a government. That member gets 28 days, extendable by 14. Until a new government takes office, Netanyahu's outgoing government stays on as caretaker.

What is the difference between FPTP and proportional representation?

Under first-past-the-post, used for India's Lok Sabha, the candidate with the most votes in each constituency wins, so seat share can differ sharply from vote share. Under party-list proportional representation, used for Israel's Knesset, parties get seats roughly in proportion to their national vote share. India uses a third method, the single transferable vote, for the President, Vice-President and Rajya Sabha.

Is the UN General Assembly resolution on the Cuba embargo binding?

No. The General Assembly makes recommendations under the UN Charter. Only Security Council decisions bind member states. The 2026 resolution passed 130-17-25, its 34th adoption, and India voted in favour.