After voting ended on Tuesday night, two out of three exit polls give Gantz the edge, with Channel 12’s poll showing the Blue and White Party leading with 34 Knesset seats, over Likud’s 33, while Channel 13’s exit survey put Blue and White at 33 seats and Likud at 31, and Kan’s put the two parties at a dead tie.

Based on the early exit polling, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even if victorious, will be forced again to secure a governing coalition, having failed to earn a clear majority in the vote.

“Only time will tell whether the polls are correct, but certainly what we’re hearing at this stage is that there's been no outright winner, this was a close contest,” said RT Middle East bureau chief Paula Slier.

“Neither of them has won an outright majority, and more importantly, neither of them – looking at these initial exit polls – is able to form a majority coalition government.”

“So what this means essentially is that the country finds itself right now in the same position it was in six months ago,” Slier added.

The election itself is a result of a failure to form a government following the vote in April, in which Netanyahu’s Likud Party and Blue and White were tied at 35 Knesset seats each, with smaller parties dividing the remaining 50. Neither managed to attract enough smaller parties to reach the bare minimum of 61 seats needed for a government.

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