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Israeli turnout reached nearly 67% by 6 p.m. on Tuesday, the highest at that point in any election since at least 1973, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party petitioned to keep polls open past their 10 p.m. closing time and his chief rival accused him of laying the groundwork to contest the result.
The Central Elections Committee said turnout stood at 66.7% as of 6 p.m. local time, nine percentage points higher than at the same hour in the 2022 election. Netanyahu is locked in a tight race with Gadi Eisenkot, his former military chief of staff, and a loss could end his decades-long political career.
The military said turnout among soldiers climbed above 68% by 5 p.m., compared with 65% at the same stage in 2022.
Hanna Swaid, a Palestinian Christian from the Galilee and a former Knesset member, linked the surge to four years of simmering anger at Netanyahu among both Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel.
“Palestinian citizens want to change things and kick out the extremist ministers,” he said, referring to National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
He added that elections are the only way to do so “in a democratic state, as far as you can still call Israel that.”
Palestinian citizens make up slightly more than one-fifth of Israel’s population, but their parties have never won proportional representation in the Knesset. Even a handful of seats could prove decisive in a close contest, Swaid said, noting that Arab turnout has long been both a factor in results and a political weapon used to scare and mobilize right-wing voters.
Likud has asked the Central Elections Committee to extend voting beyond 10 p.m. Several parties made a request to that effect, according to Israel’s Arutz Sheva, and the committee was due to meet at 7:15 p.m. to discuss it.
The outcome was not known at the time of reporting. The committee has said anyone waiting in line at 10 p.m. will be allowed to vote.
Eisenkot opposed the bid, saying no exceptional incident had occurred to justify it. In a statement, he said the request was “intended to lay the groundwork for allegations challenging the integrity of the election, continuing the lies Netanyahu has been spreading since this morning.”
His party, Yashar, rejected the calls as well, with officials telling Haaretz that Netanyahu was preparing to claim the election’s integrity had been compromised.
Netanyahu met Smotrich and other local officials in an effort to boost right-wing turnout and steer voters away from rival parties. “We need to wake people up, get them out of their homes to vote,” he said, according to Arutz Sheva.
He also urged supporters not to back Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, a party in the opposition bloc that he called a “fake right-wing” party. If it fails to clear the 3.25% threshold needed to enter the Knesset, Netanyahu said, his coalition would win more seats.
In a post on X, Netanyahu said there were four hours “to save Israel.” He has been accused of “fearmongering” and “incitement” after warning earlier in the day that Palestinian citizens were “racing to the ballots.”
Opposition leaders also pressed their supporters. Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats, which is part of the wide opposition coalition that includes Yashar and Naftali Bennett’s Together party, said his party was losing votes to both.
“We are losing votes to Gadi and Bennett,” he wrote on social media, urging backers to turn out.
Mansour Abbas, leader of the Arab party Ra’am, also known as the United Arab List, said Netanyahu was using his party as a “scarecrow” to rally right-wing voters.
Abbas appealed for votes and said his party “will bring down Benjamin Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir in this election.”
Ra’am separately said Israeli police had seized ballot boxes in the town of Arara in the Negev. The claim was unverified at the time of reporting, and no police response was included in the information available.
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