With 99% of Votes Counted, Bibi’s Right-Wing Bloc Slumps to 58 Seats

By Staff, Agencies

With 99% of the vote in the “Israeli” entity’s elections counted, the right-wing bloc appears to have lost one Knesset seat from earlier preliminary results bringing the total number to 58, falling the Central Elections Committee reported Wednesday. “Israeli” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling Likud holds firm with 36 seats.

The bloc is now three seats short of gaining a majority in the 120-strong Knesset needed to form a coalition government.

Blue & White, however, appears to have gained one seat at the expense of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, bringing the centrist party's tally to 33 seats and the Haredi party's to nine.

The Arab Joint List political alliance appears to emerge as the third largest party in the “Israeli” entity with 15 seats, according to the latest tally of votes.

Another Haredi party, United Torah Judaism, has 7 seats, while the right-wing Yamina headed by Naftali Bennett appears to barely edge the threshold with six seats.

Avigdor Liberman's Yisarel Beytenu and the alliance of the entity’s left-wing parties – Labor-Gesher-Meretz – both won seven Knesset seats.

Netanyahu's Likud emerged victorious after Monday's elections with exit polls initially showing his bloc winning 60 seats and his party winning 37. Blue & White was predicted to win between 32 and 34 seats, with the center-left bloc claiming just 54 MKs.

According to the Central Elections Committee, all polling stations have been counted and results are being calculated and reviewed and were published Tuesday.

These results do not include an estimated 340,000 absentee ballots from military polling stations, overseas diplomats and more than 4,000 votes cast at sixteen insulated polls for voters who are currently staying in a home quarantine due fears of spreading the deadly coronavirus.