How elections work in Israel

In Israel the entire country is a single electoral district. There is no member of the Knesset “for your area”, and not a single name appears on the ballot paper.

You vote for an entire party list. The list is closed: the party itself sets the order of its candidates before election day, and the voter does not change it. If a party takes 8 seats, they go to the first eight people on its list.

The prime minister is not elected directly either: the office is determined by the balance of forces in the Knesset once the votes have been counted. Direct elections for prime minister were held only three times — in 1996, 1999 and 2001 — and were then abandoned.

This is arranged differently from Russia, Ukraine or Belarus, where some deputies are elected in constituencies and you have “your own” deputy. Here nobody has one.

A seat is one place in the Knesset. There are 120 in all; the number is fixed in Basic Law: The Knesset and has not changed since the first elections of 1949.

The price of a seat is not fixed — it is calculated after the votes have been counted. The valid votes cast for the lists that cleared the threshold are added up and divided by 120. The result is the “moded” (מודד) — the price of a single seat. Each list's votes are divided by the moded, and the whole-number part is its seats.

For a sense of scale: in 2022, 4 764 742 ballots were declared valid, and a seat cost roughly 36 000–39 000 votes. A party with 10 seats stands for about 370 000 people.

Forming a government and keeping it in place requires the support of 61 seats out of 120.

To enter the Knesset, a list needs at least 3.25% of the valid votes. This is section 81 of the Knesset Elections Law, and at the elections of 27 October 2026 the rule applies unchanged.

3.25% of 120 is 3.9 seats. In practice, a list that clears the threshold immediately receives at least 4 seats.

If it falls short, its votes do not pass to a “second-favourite” party. They drop out of the calculation altogether, and the 120 seats are divided among the lists that got through. Indirectly, this helps the larger lists.

How this has looked:

• 2022: Meretz — 150 793 votes, 4 062 short. Balad — 138 617. Together with Bayit Yehudi (56 775), that is more than 346 000 ballots without a single seat.
• April 2019: the New Right — 138 598 votes, short by fewer than 1 500.

The seats left over after the division by the “moded” are distributed under the Bader-Ofer method (שיטת בדר-עופר), which is the d'Hondt method.

There is a single rule: for each list, “votes ÷ (seats already won + 1)” is calculated. Whichever list has the higher figure takes the seat.

Example. The moded is 40 000 and one seat is left.

• A: 1 000 000 votes, 25 seats → 1 000 000 ÷ 26 = 38 461
• B: 200 000 votes, 5 seats → 200 000 ÷ 6 = 33 333
• C: 340 000 votes, 8 seats → 340 000 ÷ 9 = 37 778

The seat goes to A.

But if B and C have signed a surplus-vote agreement (הסכם עודפים), they are counted as a single list in this calculation: (200 000 + 340 000) ÷ 14 = 38 571. That is more than A has, so the seat goes to the bloc, and within the bloc it goes to C.

The agreement works only if both partners have cleared the threshold.

A citizen of Israel may vote if they have turned 18 by election day, are entered on the electoral register and have not been deprived of the right by a court. The register is compiled automatically from the population registry — no application is required.

The main thing almost nobody expects: on election day you have to be physically present in Israel. There is no postal voting, no voting at a consulate and no voting by proxy.

The only people who vote abroad are salaried staff of Israeli diplomatic missions, emissaries of the Jewish Agency and related organisations, their spouses and children under 20 living with them, and seafarers on a voyage. That is all.

Anyone who has received citizenship recently should be sure to check the register: it closes in advance, and automatic inclusion may not come in time.

Your polling station is assigned by the address registered in your teudat zehut. You cannot choose a different one. Here is how to find it:

• on the Interior Ministry website (as of the end of July 2026 the service for the elections to the 26th Knesset has not yet opened);
• by telephone on 1-800-101-975 or 073-2458358;
• by SMS or WhatsApp to 053-3801464;
• in the paper voter notice sent out by post.

You do not have to bring the notice. What you must bring is photographic identification — one of five documents: a teudat zehut (including the biometric one), a valid Israeli passport, a valid Israeli photo driving licence, a Knesset member's card or a valid military ID. A copy is not accepted.

Polling stations are open from 07:00 to 22:00; in localities with up to 350 voters, in hospitals and in prisons, from 08:00 to 20:00. Anyone who has joined the queue before closing time will be able to vote.

In the booth you do not tick a box. In front of you are stacks of small white slips of paper — one for each party list. You take the one you want, put it in an envelope, seal it and drop it into the ballot box.

The slip carries the list's letter code in large type and the party's name in small type. The two- or three-letter Hebrew code is assigned by the Central Elections Committee; parties hold on to their codes and print them on all their advertising. It is the code, not the name, that determines your vote.

What matters:

• If there is no slip for your party, tell the polling committee; they are required to restock it.
• A code written by hand on a blank slip is valid.
• Two different ballot slips in the envelope make the vote invalid; two identical ones count as one.
• Do not add anything to the slip: markings can void the ballot.

Find out your party's code in advance.

An election does not end with the count of the votes — that is where it starts.

Once the official results are published, the President has 7 days to consult all the factions and then entrusts the formation of a government to one of the members of the Knesset. Not necessarily the leader of the largest party, but whoever has the better chance of assembling 61 seats.

From that point the deadlines are strict (Basic Law: the Government, sections 7–11):

• 28 days, which the President may extend by a further 14 in total — a maximum of 42 days.
• If that fails, within 3 days the mandate passes to another member of the Knesset: 28 days, with no extension.
• If that fails too, 61 members of the Knesset may name a specific candidate to the President in writing; he has 14 days.
• If no one succeeds, the Knesset is dissolved and new elections are called.

That is how Israel went through five campaigns in under four years: from April 2019 to November 2022.

No party in the whole of Israel's history has won 61 seats on its own. A government is always a coalition.

Hence the main point: a seat converts not into a position but into a bloc. A party with 5 seats, without which the coalition has 58 rather than 61, dictates terms more forcefully than a party with 20 seats that has nowhere else to go. This is not a failure of the system but its arithmetic.

So before voting it is worth separating two questions:

1. How close the party is to my own views. 2. Whom it is prepared to sit in government with, and what it will sacrifice in order to do so.

The second is often the more important. Coalition agreements are published once signed, and they show what each party actually bargained for.

One more thing: a party in opposition does not implement its programme at all.

“I will vote at the consulate or by post.” No. The only people who vote abroad are the regular staff of Israeli missions, Jewish Agency emissaries with their families, and sailors at sea. Everyone else has to be physically in Israel — plan any travel in advance.

“My vote for a small party will at least go to someone.” It will not. A list that fails to take 3.25% drops out of the count entirely; the votes do not pass to a “similar” party. In 2022 more than 346,000 votes were lost this way in three lists alone.

“I am a citizen, so I am on the register.” Most likely yes — but not necessarily, if the teudat zehut was issued recently or you have moved. The register is compiled as of a fixed date and is not changed afterwards. Before the 2024 municipal elections a third of new immigrants (olim) did not know where to vote. Check your own entry as soon as the Interior Ministry opens the service.