The Israeli election of Oct. 27, 2026, was among the most highly anticipated votes in the country’s history. It was consequential, if not yet conclusive.

With nearly all the votes counted, it is still unclear who will lead the country following the first national ballot since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack, and the devastating wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran that Israel has launched since.

The Conversation turned to Dov Waxman, an expert on Israeli politics at the University of California, Los Angeles, to walk us through the main takeaways and the process and difficulties facing anyone trying to form a coalition government following a divided vote.

What can we take away from the election results?

The first thing to note is simply the massive turnout – with a 77.7% turnout of those eligible voting, the highest turnout in more than two decades. That in itself is significant. It underscores how much importance Israelis attached to this vote.

Before the election, many observers were saying that it was one of the most consequential – if not the most consequential – votes, and clearly many Israelis felt the same way.

What drove this high turnout was different types of fears. Israelis of all persuasions were worried about how the outcome would affect what kind of country Israel becomes.

The second big takeaway is that the ruling coalition, formed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the 2022 election, was resoundingly rejected by the majority of Israeli voters – well over 50% cast their vote for parties opposed to the current government.

The five parties that make up Netanyahu’s right-wing and religious coalition went into the election with 68 seats in the 120-seat parliament. That same bloc will now have 53 – and that is a significant loss, no matter how Netanyahu tries to spin this as a victory.

It means that those five parties will not be able to form the next government, and as such, the vote stands as a repudiation of the Netanyahu government.

Netanyahu’s Likud party will still be the largest in parliament. But its share of the national vote declined, and it looks like it will have six fewer........

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