Israel's final count gives Likud 27 seats and neither bloc a government

The counting is done, and it produced no government. The Central Elections Committee published final results on Friday after the last double envelope ballots, cast by soldiers, diplomats, prisoners and hospital patients, were counted overnight. Likud took 27 seats, one more than the count showed on Thursday, gaining the seat at the expense of its ultra Orthodox partner Shas, which fell to six, its weakest result since 1992.

The full distribution runs across eleven lists. Yashar, led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, took 21 seats. The B'Yachad alliance of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid took 12. The Joint List took 11. The Democrats and Ra'am took eight each. Yisrael Beiteinu, United Torah Judaism and Otzma Yehudit took seven each. Shas and Religious Zionism took six each. The electoral threshold was 3.25 percent, or 184,947 votes, and every other list fell below it.

By bloc, the arithmetic has not moved since election night. Netanyahu's right wing and religious bloc holds 53 seats. The opposition bloc holds 48. The Arab led parties hold 19, a record combined total, and both bloc leaders have ruled out governing with them. Sixty one seats are needed to form a government. Netanyahu remains caretaker prime minister, eight seats short.

Turnout reached 77.9 percent, the highest in nearly three decades, with 5,716,665 ballots cast, as of October 30. Yair Lapid, second on the B'Yachad list, claimed victory for the anti Netanyahu bloc on the ground that the prime minister failed to reach a majority. Likud has alleged fraud in Arab polling places, including bribery, threats and forgery, and says it handed hundreds of testimonies to the police, the Shin Bet and the elections committee. The Arab parties reject the allegations. The committee chair said he could not verify the suspicions, and the Shin Bet, which is investigating suspected foreign interference, has cautioned against treating the inquiry as an accusation against an entire community. President Herzog has called for a full investigation while warning against casting suspicion on Arab voters as a group.

The committee said the results remain subject to minor corrections during routine verification. The certified results go to Herzog on November 4. He will then consult the parties and give one lawmaker 28 days to form a government. The 26th Knesset is scheduled to be sworn in on November 10.