Israel is set to hold a national election on October 27, according to Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, its first since the Gaza war and the wars on Lebanon and Iran.
The precise ballot date had been unclear since the Israeli parliament voted in May to disband, raising the possibility the election could be held early.
However, coalition head Ofir Katz told a parliamentary committee on Sunday that the original October 27 date set by law would be kept.
Successive surveys have suggested Netanyahu’s coalition of far-right nationalist and religious parties would lose the ballot, though his political rivals still have no clear path to power and the political landscape may still shift.
Less than a year after a 2022 political comeback at the head of Israel’s most extreme-right government to date, Netanyahu’s security credentials were left in tatters by Hamas’ surprise attack on October 7, 2023.
Polls show many are also unhappy with Netanyahu over the outcome of the Iran war.
Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, consists of 120 members elected for a four-year term. It can be dissolved early by a simple majority vote, which is common in Israel.
The entire country of roughly seven million voters forms a single constituency. The vote is based on full proportional representation: the number of seats is allocated in proportion to the percentage of votes obtained by each list.
Any list passing an electoral threshold of 3.25 percent of valid votes — equivalent to four seats — enters the Knesset.
The Israeli electorate is fragmented into multiple parties, with 29 lists running in 2022.
Historic movements such as the right-wing Likud and the formerly establishment Labour Party, now renamed the Democrats, are flanked by lists representing, among others, ultra-Orthodox Jews, extreme Religious Zionists, immigrants from the former Soviet bloc, and Palestinians with Israeli citizenship.
The large number of parties makes it virtually impossible to obtain the absolute majority of 61 seats needed to form a government.
Once the ballots are counted, negotiations begin to form a coalition.
