Israelis go to vote yet again today in fourth election in two years

Israelis will head to the polls for the fourth time in under two years on Tuesday, hoping to end the political stalemate that began in December 2018 when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initiated the first election.

There will be 6,578,084 Israelis eligible to vote for any of the 38 parties running in 13,685 polling stations across the country, including 750 special polling stations for the sick and quarantined due to COVID-19.

Exit polls will be broadcast at 10 p.m. Tuesday night on three television networks. But the real results from the normal polling stations will only be available on Wednesday, and some 430,000 double ballots from the special polling stations, soldiers, emissaries and prisoners will arrive by Thursday or Friday. The final results must be in by March 31.

The candidates spent the final day before the election in their strongholds.

Netanyahu campaigned at Jerusalem’s Mahaneh Yehuda market, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid was in Haifa, and Yamina head Naftali Bennett met with business owners in Rehovot.

New Hope leader Gideon Sa’ar prayed for success at the Western Wall, and the leaders of smaller parties called potential supporters along with telemarketers at their campaign headquarters.

Sa’ar issued an unprecedented attack on Bennett on Monday morning, hours after Bennett signed a document ruling out joining a government led by opposition leader Yair Lapid. Both Sa’ar and Bennett had made commitments more than a month ago to not sit in a Lapid-led government. Sources close to Bennett said he had changed nothing by putting the vow in print.

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