Baz Ratner/Reuters
A polling station on Tuesday in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Elon Moreh, near Nablus.
TEL AVIV — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu performed far worse than expected in Israel’s national elections on Tuesday, according to exit polls, and while he remained likely to serve a third term, a surprise surge by a new centrist party indicated that he would be under pressure to form a more moderate governing coalition.
Pool photo by Uriel Sinai
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel touched the Western Wall on Tuesday in Jerusalem.
As polls closed at 10 p.m., Israeli news channels reported that Mr. Netanyahu’s rightist Likud-Beiteinu list would win 30 or 31 of Parliament’s 120 seats, and the new centrist party, There is a Future, would take 18, followed by left-leaning Labor, with 17. More important, the polls showed a significant tightening between the bloc of right-wing and religious parties, with a razor-thin majority of 61, and 59 for the center-left factions.
“Israelis are asking for a moderate coalition,” said Marcus Sheff, executive director of The Israel Project, an advocacy group. “Israel’s middle class wasn’t asleep as people assumed. The embers of the social protest are still strong.”
The exit polls, which are preliminary, suggested that Mr. Netanyahu’s challengers had a far stronger showing than the prime minister and his aides had anticipated. Two hours before the polls closed, Mr. Netanyahu made an urgent appeal for support from Israelis who had not yet voted.
“The Likud leadership is in danger,” Mr. Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page around 8 p.m. “I ask you to leave everything and go out now to vote,” he added. “This is very important to guarantee the future of the state of Israel.”
While Mr. Netanyahu’s joint campaign list with the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu faction was still expected to win more of Parliament’s seats than the next-largest party, making him the likeliest candidate to lead the next government, a relatively weak showing and a surge for centrist and left-leaning parties could force him to moderate his policies and leave him with a fragile coalition of competing interests.
The Central Election Commission reported that 63 percent of Israel’s eligible voters had cast ballots by 8 p.m., nearly as many as the 65 percent who voted over all in 2009. The turnout was on pace to exceed that in the four previous elections, experts said, though not to reach the 78 percent who voted in 1999.
Noting that there had been an unusually large portion of undecided voters in polls taken in the campaign’s final days, analysts were predicting a surprisingly strong showing for There is a Future and perhaps for the left-leaning Labor.
Erel Margalit, a venture capitalist who as No. 10 on Labor’s list was likely to land in Parliament, described the large turnout as a “protest vote” against the prime minister’s policies on dealing with the Palestinians and the economy, and a follow-up to the social protests that brought 500,000 people to the streets of Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011.
“It’s a clear demonstration of how many Israelis feel like something needs to be done and something needs to change,” Mr. Margalit, a first-time candidate, told reporters at an election-night party. “It was not a fringe phenomenon, it was a mainstream phenomenon. It is moving from the streets into the political arena.”
Polls in recent weeks have consistently predicted a victory for Mr. Netanyahu’s ticket. But the polls have also shown the joint ticket declining in strength, from the 42 seats it holds in the current Parliament to perhaps 32 or 35, and losing support to the Jewish Home, a party further to the right that has been revitalized and energized under the leadership of Naftali Bennett, a charismatic first-time candidate.
The Likud also apparently was losing votes to There is a Future, led by the former journalist Yair Lapid, according to Israeli news media.
Mr. Netanyahu, after casting his vote, went to the Western Wall, a Jewish holy site in the Old City of Jerusalem, and said, “I pray today for the future of Israel, for the sake of our people, I believe in this and I am certain that Israel’s citizens will do all within their power to give strength to the people of Israel in its land and country.”
Exit Polls Show Netanyahu Lost Ground to Centrist Party
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Exit Polls Show Netanyahu Lost Ground to Centrist Party
