Israel election — live: Exit polls suggest deadlock despite Netanyahu gaining most seats

The left-wing Meretz and the right-wing New Hope parties have both claimed their slips have been stolen from multiple polling booths, according to Israeli media.

The parties have complained to the Central Elections Committee, with New Hope blaming Likued supporters for the incidents in places such as Haifa and Ramle.

Similarly, Meretz said slips had been taken to boost the pro-Netanyahu bloc.

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has voiced his support for his friend Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party.

The day before the Israeli election, he tweeted that it would be “fantastic to see a truly liberal, centrist party leading the next government of Israel”.

Amid fears of fatigue because this is the fourth election in only two years, voter turnout was surprisingly high at the beginning of the day.

However by midday that had slowed to just over 25 percent with nearly 1.7 million Israelis showing up to the polls. That is about two percent less than the same time during the last elections in March 2020, the elections committee said. 

Voters told The Independent they were concerned that constant elections was draining the country’s finances at such a crucial time for the world’s economy. 

Citizens are worried about the immense waste of funds, Shahin Nasser a voter from Haifa told The Independent.  “People are starting to feel it. the economic crisis the Covid pandemic has created, has not help either, she said.

“Netanyahu keeps saying that we are in the best economic situation of all nations of the world, but he lies, and people know it. They are struggling to survive. The effects of working on a minimum budget for three years, without clear economic policy, and without allocating budget for empowering impoverished and weakend communities, is felt, though spending almost 2,4 Bilion shekels in two years on elections.”

In an about-face, Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to get out the vote among Israeli-Arabs. 

After lambasting his opponent in the last election, Benny Gantz, for considering a political coalition with Israeli-Arab lawmakers, Mr Netanyahu has changed his tune as a fractured right-wing base may put his hold on power in jeopardy. 

In previous elections he has faced stinging criticism from his opponents for portraying Arab citizens of Israel as the enemy, warning his support base they were voting in “droves”.

But this time around his campaign has plastered posters in Arabic to target voters. Mr Netanyahu himself visited numerous Arab communities in Israel from the Negev in the south to the triangle region in the north.

Despite threats from her own community, Dema Taya is the first Israeli Arab woman to run for Likud. “Positive things are happening, I started to talk about this shift two years ago,” she told The Independent. “People have woken up that the Arab parties are just a lie they don’t help the Arabs - and neither do the left wing parties- so we have started to look for parties who can fight for us,” she claimed.

Mr Netanyahu is promising to appoint an Arab Affairs minister to his cabinet to address, among other issues, the sky high rate of violence in Israeli-Arab communities. 

One recent Israeli television poll found that 1 out of 3 Arab Israelis support the longtime Israeli leader. According to an Israel Democracy Institute poll for Channel 12, 31 per cent of Arab Israeli voters said they want Netanyahu to stay on as prime minister, while 56 per cent said they don’t.

The Joint List, an alliance of politicians predominantly representing Arab Israelis, won 15 seats in last year’s election.

Its election campaign this year was dampened by the fact that one party - Ra’am - decided to leave the umbrella group and run on its own.

This leaves three parties in the Joint List: Hadash, Ta’al and Balad.

Ayman Odeh, the group’s leader and the head of Hadash, spoke outside a polling station in Haifa, northern Israel, earlier today:

As mentioned earlier, polling booths have been set up in hospitals across Israel to allow ill citizens to vote.

Here’s one voter casting his ballot from his hospital bed:

Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst, has highlighted the importance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for voters - an issue that has not appeared prominently in election campaign ads.

Writing in Haaretz, the pollster said: “The electorate’s greatest divide between left, right and center remains the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is a defining, polarizing issue.”

“The conflict need not star in campaign ads to have a determining power over Israeli minds,” she added.

Avigdor Lieberman, the right-wing former defence minister and leader of the hardline Yisrael Beiteinu party, has strongly condemned Benjamin Netanyahu on the day of the election.

He said the country’s fourth election in just two years was down to “the bad will of one man” trying to escape trial on corruption charges.

In a passionate appeal to the Israeli electorate, the country’s president Reuven Rivlin urged people to vote while warning that four elections in just two years had “eroded public trust in the democratic process”.

“I am voting today for the last time as president, but above all, I do so as a concerned citizen. Very concerned,” he said from the polling station in Jerusalem where he cast his ballot. 

“Four elections in two years erode public trust in the democratic process, but only you can influence. There is no other way.”

He finished his remarks with a direct plea for people to vote. “My dear ones, for the last time, and from the heart of the president to yours – please, go and vote. For our children and grandchildren, for all of us,” he added.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s main opponents have also cast their ballots in Tuesday’s election.

Here they are voting: