Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed victory Wednesday after a bitter election and last-minute declarations to boost his party’s low opinion poll numbers.
With 99% of the votes counted, his Likud party grabbed at least 29 of the 120 seats in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, according to unofficial numbers from the Israeli election committee.
Its main rival, the Zionist Union alliance, got at least 24 seats, the committee said.
Netanyahu’s road to victory was bumpy, with the final results a far cry from experts’ predictions.
For weeks, his party was lagging in various opinion polls, prompting Netanyahu to make sharp turns toward the right during the final days of the campaign.
Days before the election, he said there would be no Palestinian state under him.
He also said Israeli Arabs were voting in large numbers, urging his supporters to head to the polls.
Netanyahu released a video Tuesday on his Facebook page urging his supporters to vote. He suggested that leftists are bringing “huge amounts” of Israel’s Arab citizens to the polls to vote against his Likud party.
“The right regime is in danger, the Arab voters are coming in huge amounts to the polls,” Netanyahu said. “The leftists are bringing them (Arabs) in huge amounts to polls using buses.”
Arabs make up about 20% of Israel’s population. According to the early exit poll estimates, an Arab coalition ranked as the third largest party.
Netanyahu’s turnaround appeared to have boosted his Likud base and attracted voters from right-wing parties.
Some polls had put his party in second place behind the Zionist Union, while others predicted the two would be tied neck and neck.
“He seems to have energized that right-wing base … even inching a little bit ahead of him,” CNN’s Elise Labott said.
Pollster Avi Degani, who predicted a Likud victory all along, said other pollsters relied too heavily on Internet technology.
“More of the sampling needed to be done by telephone,” he said.
“The Internet does not represent the state of Israel and the people of Israel,” Degani said, referring to modern statistical methods.
“It represents panels, and the panels are biased strongly to the center.”
As Netanyahu’s win reverberates, the main question remains: Did he gain extra seats because of an 11th-hour surge, or were the major polls skewed from the beginning?
