Israel's Deadlocked Election: Gadi Eisenkot Must Count to 61 as Markets Reprice the Race

A week ago, Israel voted in its first general election since the Hamas-led attacks of October 2023, and the result was a paradox: the highest turnout since 1999, 77.7 percent, produced a parliament in which nobody won. With 100 percent of votes counted, Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud is still the largest party, with 27 seats, and his bloc holds 53 of the Knesset's 120 seats. Gadi Eisenkot's opposition bloc holds 48. The two Arab-led lists hold a record 19. A government needs 61. Everybody is short, and the arithmetic, not the voters, will now decide who governs.

The calendar from here is precise, and it is why this story is about to move fast. Official results are published on Wednesday, November 4, President Isaac Herzog begins consultations with party leaders the same day, and the new Knesset is sworn in on November 10. Whoever gets the mandate has 28 days to build a coalition, extendable by 14; a second candidate would get 28 days, and a third route — 61 signatures in 21 days — is the last stop before yet another election. Every one of those deadlines is a moment when the odds will jump, and that is exactly what the prediction markets are already doing.

Before the vote, the markets had effectively crowned Eisenkot. A Polymarket snapshot on October 25 put the former army chief at about 52 percent to become the next prime minister, against about 28 percent for Netanyahu; Kalshi's numbers were nearly identical, 52 to 26. Today, November 3, Polymarket prices Eisenkot at 44.25 percent and Netanyahu at 31.5 percent. The market still prefers the general, but it has taken eight points off him and handed four or five to the incumbent. The reason is visible in the count: Likud finished first, Netanyahu's bloc is five seats bigger than Eisenkot's, and the largest party usually gets the first attempt at forming a government.

Yet Eisenkot's path to 61 is, on paper, the cleaner one. His 48 plus the Arab lists' 19 makes 67 — if the Arab parties can be brought along. Over the weekend Eisenkot pledged to act "immediately" on that parliamentary majority, setting out four principles for any partner, including recognising Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Ahmad Tibi of the Joint List has said his party will not join a government but could support one from outside, in return for commitments on tackling crime and recognising Bedouin villages. That outside-support formula is the whole ballgame, and also its fragility: Eisenkot's own bloc is deeply divided over sharing power with Arab parties at all, and Netanyahu's camp has spent the days since the count crying foul, claiming foreign funding swayed voters and calling the election stolen — rhetoric that burns the very bridge Netanyahu himself would need if he tried to reach 61 from 53.

So my prediction is Eisenkot, but without the market's old confidence. I put him at 40 percent, a touch below Polymarket's 44.25 percent. The gap is small and honest: the market is weighing the same two facts I am, and landing in the same place. What holds me back is that Netanyahu gets the first move — the bigger bloc, the largest party, the incumbent's advantage in the president's consultations — and that a unity government led by a third figure, or a failure that sends Israel back to the polls, remains a live outcome. Naftali Bennett trades at about 4 percent and Avigdor Lieberman at about 5 percent, which is the market's way of saying the field is not quite a two-man race.

Watch November 4 first: the official publication, and Herzog's consultations. Then watch whether Tibi's offer survives contact with Eisenkot's partners, and whether Netanyahu can peel defectors from the opposition instead. The election settled who sits in the Knesset. It did not settle who governs, and the market's repricing — from coronation to coin flip with a favourite — is the most honest summary of where Israel stands that I have seen.