Will Likud win the most seats in the 2026 Israeli legislative election?

- [2026-07-17] The 25th Knesset formally dissolved, triggering a national election campaign; Israel's parliament officially dissolved, kicking off a high-stakes campaign for national elections on October 27 , the first time since 1988 a Knesset completed a full term before dissolving. Source: aljazeera.com. - [2026-10-27] Election day remains set for October 27, 2026, to elect all 120 Knesset seats and determine the successor to Netanyahu's government, per Wikipedia's live election page. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Israeli_legislative_election. - [2026-10-01] Latest i24News/Direct Polls survey (fieldwork Oct 1) put Likud 28, Yashar 22, Together 9, The Democrats 9 , with the Netanyahu bloc at 60 seats — Likud's best recent reading. Source: israelvote.meforum.org. - [2026-10-01] By contrast, Maariv's LRI+P4A poll (same day) showed Yashar 21, Likud 19, Together 13, The Democrats 10 , government bloc at 51. Source: israelvote.meforum.org. - [2026-10-04] The Haaretz-reported Channel 13 poll (fieldwork Sep 30) found Yashar's party weakens by one seat but remains the largest party with 21 seats... followed by Netanyahu's Likud with 19 seats, one more than the previous poll . Source: haaretz.com. - [2026-10-05] Middle East Forum's poll-of-polls average (5 polling houses, fieldwork Sep 17–Oct 1, "23 days to the vote") shows Likud and Yashar statistically tied for first place, each at 22 seats average (Likud mean 21.4, range 19–28; Yashar mean 22, range 21–23). Source: israelvote.meforum.org. - [2026-10-05] The same tracker shows the "Netanyahu bloc" (37th government parties: Likud, Religious Zionism, Otzma Yehudit, Shas, UTJ) averaging 51 seats versus 52 for opposition parties and 13 for Arab parties — effectively a dead heat, short of a majority for either bloc. Source: israelvote.meforum.org. - [2026-09-23] i24NEWS/Jerusalem Post reporting on polls taken right after party lists closed showed a split picture: Gadi Eisenkot leading most surveys and Benjamin Netanyahu ahead in one , with that single i24NEWS poll showing Netanyahu's Likud leading the race with 27 seats, while Eisenkot's Yashar received 22 . Source: jpost.com. - [2026-09-30] Earlier in late September, most published polls (Kan, Channel 13, Maariv) had Eisenkot's Yashar party ahead of Likud by roughly 1–4 seats, e.g. The Kan News poll also placed Eisenkot's Yashar party in first place, with 25 seats. Netanyahu's Likud received 21 seats . Source: jpost.com. - [2026-09-23] A Channel 14 open-question leadership poll found Netanyahu far ahead of named rivals on preferred PM (53% vs. Eisenkot 34%), though this is a leadership-preference poll, not a seat projection. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership_opinion_polling_for_the_2026_Israeli_legislative_election. - [2026-09-09] Final deadline for parties to submit candidate lists to the Central Elections Committee has passed, locking in the field including Likud, the new Yashar party (Eisenkot), Together (Bennett), and other blocs. Source: jpost.com (article-902333). - [2026-10-05] No vote has occurred yet; the official outcome will ultimately be certified by Israel's Central Election Committee after the October 27 vote, per the resolution source cited in the market rules (gov.il Central Elections Committee page). BOTTOM LINE: With three weeks to go, Likud and the new Yashar party (Gadi Eisenkot) are running essentially neck-and-neck for the largest-party spot, trading the lead from poll to poll (aggregate averages show a ~22-22 tie, with individual polls ranging from Likud+6 to Yashar+6); the pro-Netanyahu and opposition blocs are similarly tied near 51-52 seats, meaning the "most seats" outcome for Likud is a close, unresolved contest rather than a settled trend. NOT FOUND: No polling conducted after October 1, 2026 was found as of this writing; no official CEC results exist yet (vote is Oct 27); could not find any post-list-finalization poll showing a decisive, stable Likud lead over Yashar.

- [2026-10-05] Current (pre-election) Knesset composition: Likud holds 32/120 seats, the largest bloc, with Netanyahu as incumbent PM; this is the status quo the 2026 vote will change. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Israeli_legislative_election - [recent elections base rate] In the last nine Knesset elections, Likud (or Likud-Beiteinu) was the single largest party in 2022 (32 seats), 2021 (30), 2020 (36), and 2015 (30), but tied with Blue and White in April 2019 and was overtaken by Blue and White in September 2019 — i.e., Likud was the undisputed top party in roughly 6 of the last 8-9 contests, with 1 loss and 1 tie in the past decade. Likud had been the leading vote-getter in each subsequent election until April 2019, when Likud tied with Blue and White and September 2019, when Blue and White won one more seat than the Likud. Likud won the most seats at the 2020 and 2021 elections - [2022-11-01] Most recent election: The Likud party increased its number of seats in the Knesset from 30 (de facto 29) to 32 and remained the largest party in the Parliament , confirming Likud's recent dominance baseline. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/2047-8852.12430 - [2025-09-16 to 2026-09-30] A new centrist party, Yashar, led by ex-IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot, was formed in September 2025 and has since split the anti-Netanyahu/centrist vote, becoming the chief rival to Likud's "largest party" status — a genuinely new configuration with no direct historical precedent for Likud. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Israeli_legislative_election - [2026-09-15] A Statista 15-day average (Sept 1–15, 2026) showed the Likud party, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, polled at a 15-day average of 23.2 parliamentary seats , tied with Yashar at 23.2, indicating a near pure toss-up for first place a month and a half before the vote. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1662778/average-election-polling-political-parties-israel-by-knesset-seats/ - [2026-10-05 poll-of-polls] An aggregator of 14 recent polls gives Yashar... MEF average 24, Mean 22.9, Range 20 to 25 versus Likud... MEF average 23, Mean 21.9, Range 18 to 31 — Yashar leads on average but Likud's range (18-31) shows one outlier poll (i24NEWS) putting it well ahead. https://israelvote.meforum.org/ - [2026-09-17 through 2026-10-01] Five separate post-list-closing polls (Channel 12, Channel 13, Kan, Walla, i24NEWS/Maariv) in late Sept/early Oct mostly show Yashar leading by 1-4 seats, except i24NEWS which showed the Likud led by Netanyahu was in first place with 27 seats... Unlike all the other surveys, it showed Netanyahu's Likud leading the race with 27 seats, while Eisenkot's Yashar received 22 , illustrating substantial house-effect divergence among pollsters. https://www.jpost.com/israel-election-2026/article-908282 - [2026-10-04] Most recent tracked poll (Kan, published Oct 4): Yashar, led by Gadi Eisenkot, remains the largest party... coming in at 23 seats. At the same time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party has gained one seat, rising to 21 seats , showing a modest narrowing trend toward Likud in the final weeks. https://www.jpost.com/israel-election-2026/article-909918 - [2026-07-13 to 2026-10-01] The historical base rate for "last-minute polling movement" in Israel is notable: Netanyahu/Likud have a track record of late-campaign surges (e.g., 2015, 2019, 2022), so trailing in September polls has not reliably predicted a final-result loss in past cycles, though this is a qualitative pattern rather than a formal statistic found in sources reviewed. - [2026 fragmentation] Analysts note the race is unusually fragmented, with bloc totals close to even: In an average of all mainstream polls, Yashar is now level with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party at 22 seats... The average of all mainstream polls awards the broader opposition... around 58 Knesset seats to the Netanyahu coalition's 52 , underscoring that "largest party" and "largest bloc/governing coalition" are distinct and currently contested outcomes. https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/israels-election-and-eisenkots-arab-coalition-dilemma/ - [process/timeline] The 26th Knesset elections are scheduled for 27 October 2026... the 37th government became the first to complete a full term since the 1973 election , and results are expected to be confirmed shortly after (around Nov 4, per Wikipedia's timeline), well within the market's resolution deadline of June 30, 2027. This is a regularly scheduled election, not an open-ended process, so "Other" resolution due to delay is very unlikely historically. BOTTOM LINE: Historically Likud has been the Knesset's largest party in most (roughly 6 of 9) elections since 2009, but current polling in this unusually fragmented 2026 race shows a genuine toss-up/slight disadvantage versus the new Yashar party (poll averages roughly 22-24 for Yashar vs 18-27 for Likud depending on pollster), a historically unprecedented challenge to Likud's recent dominance that the base rate alone would understate. NOT FOUND: No systematic historical dataset quantifying how often September/October polling leaders in Israeli elections ultimately became the largest party (i.e., a formal poll-accuracy track record at this ~3-week-out horizon); no independent prediction-market or professional forecaster (e.g., Metaculus) probability specific to "largest party" for 2026 was located in the search results reviewed.

YES means: Likud (led by Benjamin Netanyahu) wins the single largest number of Knesset seats of any party/coalition in the October 27, 2026 election, as certified by Israel's Central Elections Committee. - [2026-10-02] The most recent i24NEWS/Direct Polls survey, the single most Likud-favorable pollster this cycle, had already shown "Netanyahu's Likud leading the race with 27 seats, while Eisenkot's Yashar received 22" , with Netanyahu's bloc reaching 60 seats in that poll's seat distribution. https://www.jpost.com/israel-election-2026/article-908444 - [2026-09-2x] An academic review of five post-list-closing polls found Likud's reading "unusually wide" versus other houses, noting "The unusually wide spread between the i24NEWS/Direct P[olls]" and the rest of the field — meaning at least one credible outlet's methodology already puts Likud comfortably in first, a scenario that only needs to be closer to reality than consensus for YES. https://www.eurasiareview.com/24092026-israel-at-the-crossroads-the-october-27-2026-election-and-the-contest-for-the-post-netanyahu-order-analysis/ - [2026-10-04] Likud's internal momentum in the final weeks is trending upward in several trackers: a Haaretz-reported poll showed Likud rising from 18 to 19 to 20 in consecutive reports ( "It is followed by Netanyahu's Likud with 19 seats, one more than the previous poll" ), and the Oct 1 Middle East Forum/i24 reading cited by colleagues gave Likud 28 — its best recent number — suggesting a real, not just noise-driven, late-campaign recovery. - [2026-10-05] A large bloc of voters remains genuinely undecided or persuadable, which historically has broken toward Likud; analysts noted "the undecided, who are often estimated at 10% of the electorate" remain unresolved with three weeks to go, and a separate Ynet feature on swing voters found many lifelong Likud voters still "torn" rather than having defected outright. https://israelpolicyforum.org/onetwenty/ ; https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/sjrcx3bugx - [2026-10-05] Opposition strategists themselves concede no decisive rightward bleed has yet occurred: "the data available to them still shows no sign of the movement from the Right they are waiting for" , and a companion analysis found "there has still been no significant movement of voters from the Right into their camp, even as they assess that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could lose the election" — i.e., even Eisenkot's camp admits Likud's base is largely holding. https://www.jpost.com/israel-election-2026/article-910509 ; https://www.jpost.com/israel-election-2026/article-910503 - [2026-10-05] Likud is actively executing a turnout-mobilization strategy rather than a persuasion strategy, with internal reporting that the party is "shifting focus to turnout in loyal strongholds," reasoning that "even people who intend to vote and say in advance that they will do so sometimes ultimately decide not to go to the polls on Election Day" — a mechanism that, if successful, could add seats beyond current poll-based seat allocations that assume average turnout. https://www.jpost.com/israel-election-2026/article-909559 - [2026-10-05] Competing right-wing lists threaten to siphon votes without crossing the 3.25% threshold, which would mechanically redistribute leftover right-wing votes to Likud via Israel's seat-allocation formula; analysts flag "genuine uncertainty about whether several small right-wing lists—Ofer Winter's Amcha Yisrael, the Hendel-Zelekha Reservists-Economic Party alliance—will clear the 3.25 percent threshold at all, since a handful of 'wasted' right-wing votes could singlehandedly cost Netanyahu's bloc its majority" — but if Winter's list (reportedly drawing voters originating from Likud) falls short, those votes could flow back to Likud on election day, lifting its seat count. https://www.eurasiareview.com/24092026-israel-at-the-crossroads-the-october-27-2026-election-and-the-contest-for-the-post-netanyahu-order-analysis/ ; https://www.jpost.com/israel-election-2026/article-910503 - [2015 precedent] Israel's clearest historical precedent for a late Likud comeback: days before the March 17, 2015 election, final polls showed "the Zionist Union, comprised of labor and a center-left party, 26 seats over 22 for Netanyahu's hawkish Likud party" , and internal Likud polling itself showed the party down "with as many as 21 and as few as 18" seats versus the Zionist Union's 24-28 — yet Likud went on to win the election outright with 30 seats, a come-from-behind swing of roughly 8-10 seats relative to final pre-election polling that Netanyahu has repeated in part in 2019, 2020 and 2021. - [2026 mechanism] Netanyahu's campaign messaging leans heavily on his signature wartime/security playbook, a tactic with a track record of consolidating right-wing turnout late; one analysis noted the slogan "'Netanyahu does not surrender' is the official slogan for Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, which most opinion polls predict will lose around a third of its parliamentary seats" — implying his camp is aware of the gap and is actively deploying the same security-centric closing argument that powered prior comebacks. https://www.jpost.com/israel-election-2026/article-910068 BOTTOM LINE: While Yashar leads most published polls, Likud has (a) one credible pollster (i24NEWS) already showing it clearly in first with a double-digit bloc lead, (b) a documented late-campaign uptick across several trackers, (c) a large undecided/soft-Likud vote that opposition strategists admit has not yet moved away, (d) an explicit turnout-mobilization operation, (e) a possible boost from right-wing sub-threshold list voters re-consolidating to Likud, and (f) a strong historical precedent (2015, and to lesser degrees 2019-2021) of Netanyahu's Likud overperforming final pre-election polls by several seats — all of which constitute a plausible, evidence-backed path to Likud finishing as the largest party despite trailing in the current poll average. NOT FOUND: No poll conducted after October 4, 2026 was located; no final/eve-of-election poll (subject to Israel's pre-election polling blackout) exists yet; no quantified historical "polling error" statistic specific to Likud's final-poll-to-result gap in past cycles was found in a single consolidated dataset.

YES means: Likud wins the greatest number of Knesset seats in the October 27, 2026 election (determined by official Central Elections Committee results, subject to the market's merger/joint-list rules), triggering the Polymarket contract to resolve YES. This dimension argues for NO — i.e., that some other party (chiefly Eisenkot's Yashar) wins the most seats, or the outcome fails to be reflected by Likud topping the count. - [2026-09-11] A Maariv/Lazar Research poll of 4,329 respondents (fieldwork Sep 9-10, right after candidate lists closed) found Likud's seats fell to 19, its lowest level since May 2025 , which Maariv itself labeled a "historic collapse," while Yashar held steady at 25 — a 6-seat gap in Yashar's favor from a large-sample survey. - [2026-09-27] Jerusalem Post's aggregation of five polls published that week found the coalition bloc ranging from 49 seats in Maariv's poll to 63 in Channel 14's, while Gadi Eisenkot led or was nearly tied with Likud in Maariv, N12, and Channel 13 ; even the simple average that week had Eisenkot's Yashar averaging 22.2 seats, ahead of Likud's 21.2 across the five-poll set reported Oct 1 (article-908921). - [2026-09-23] Mainstream Hebrew pollsters mostly agreed Yashar was ahead: Kan put Yashar at 25 vs Likud 21, and the five-poll average that week showed Eisenkot's Yashar leading with an average of 23.6 seats, ahead of Netanyahu's Likud with 21.8 — only the single i24NEWS/Direct Polls survey showed Likud ahead. - [2026-09-28] The Middle East Forum's rolling poll tracker separately shows a persistent pattern: across many weekly updates since July, Yashar's range has been unusually narrow (roughly 20-26 seats) while Likud's range has been far wider (18-32), consistent with Likud having a thinner, more volatile floor than a consistently strong challenger. - [2026-09-10 to 2026-09-27 trend] Haaretz tracked a swing where Likud briefly "regained the lead" on Jul 27 ( Netanyahu's party overtook Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar... Likud party has regained its position as Israel's largest party, according to a Kan 11 poll ) only to fall back behind Yashar by August 6 ( Eisenkot's Yashar Party Leads Over Netanyahu's Likud by One Seat... Yashar party remains the largest, with 23 seats, while Likud is projected to win 22 ), illustrating Likud has repeatedly lost leads it briefly regained rather than consolidating one. - [2026-09-22] Polymarket's own sibling "most seats" market (distinct from this PM-focused contract) showed a sharp move against Likud: the platform estimated Yashar's chances of winning the most seats at around 62%, compared to 39% for Likud... a month earlier Likud was given a 59% chance... turned into a more than 20-point gap in favor of Gadi Eisenkot , indicating traders, not just pollsters, had shifted toward a Likud loss of "largest party" status. - [2026-09-07] Polymarket's separate "next PM" market has independently shown Eisenkot (not Netanyahu) as the standing favorite for weeks: Polymarket said Eisenkot had a 51 percent chance of becoming the next prime minister, compared with 28 percent for Netanyahu , reflecting a broader market consensus that Likud/Netanyahu are not the favored bloc. - [2026-09-30] Kan News' Oct 4-published poll — one of the most recent data points — still had Yashar remain[ing] the largest party... coming in at 23 seats. At the same time... Likud... rising to 21 seats , a 2-seat gap that, while narrowing, keeps Yashar ahead in this tracked series even in early October. - [structural mechanism] Analysts attribute Likud's vulnerability to vote-splitting among right/religious lists rather than Likud's own strength: Jerusalem Post's Sep 8 poll noted these parties are currently "wasting" the votes of 8.3% of all voters, equivalent to around 10 Knesset seats , meaning even a stable Likud vote share could translate into fewer seats if marginal right-wing lists fail to cross the threshold while Yashar consolidates centrist/anti-Netanyahu votes cleanly. - [2025-09 founding effect] Because Yashar was only founded in September 2025 and both Haaretz and i24News analyses describe it as emerging as a major challenger to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud... positioning Eisenkot as a leading contender for the premiership , there is no historical cycle in which an untested, single-issue "security generals" party of this kind has later collapsed under scrutiny in the final three weeks — removing one plausible "status quo reverts" argument for Likud. - [analytical framing] A Jerusalem Post analysis explicitly flagged this as a genuine inflection rather than noise: A Channel 13 poll had put Yashar on 26 seats, ahead of... Likud at 23, placing a party founded in 2025 in contention to become the largest faction... most of the six surveys reviewed for this article placed Yashar ahead of Likud... rang[ing] from 22 to 26 seats, while Likud ranged from 21 to 23 , i.e., even on the low end for Yashar, it still generally outpolled Likud's high end. BOTTOM LINE: Across nearly every independent pollster series from July through the most recent Oct 4 Kan survey, and in Polymarket's own adjacent "most seats" and "next PM" markets, Yashar has been the more consistent frontrunner for largest-party status, with Likud's only clear leads coming from a single outlier pollster (i24NEWS/Direct Polls); this body of evidence is the core basis for a NO resolution, i.e., Likud failing to win the most seats. NOT FOUND: No post-October-1 poll showing a clear, multi-poll-confirmed Likud lead over Yashar; no official CEC data (election is Oct 27); no systematic study quantifying how often an Israeli challenger party leading polls at this three-week-out horizon has gone on to actually finish first on election day.