In our final episode of The Polltober Show, Kate and Josh talk Democratic ceiling, a potential polling error in Democrats’ favor and the wins they’d be most jazzed about.

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As I noted in the previous post, we now have the initial exit polls from today’s election which show the “change” bloc bigger than the Netanyahu bloc but likely only by two or three seats. You have 17 or 18 seats for the two predominantly Arab parties, a historic high, based on historically high turnout today among Israel’s Arab/Palestinian citizens. Voting is only stage one of an Israeli election. Now you have to see who if anyone can form a government. It’s not at all clear that anyone will be able to. But with this mixed result you now begin a public battle over the meaning of the results. The opposition is out quickly with a pretty strong argument. The current government has gone from 68 years to apparently 50. That’s a very big drop and as they put it a massive repudiation.

It’s hard to argue with that.

On the other hand, the “change” bloc seems to have 52 or 53 seats. Again, according to the initial exit polls. So they “won” in some sense but judged in these terms it’s not like they crushed the Netanyahu bloc.

Israel polls are now closed and we have the first initial exit polls. Note that those exit polls are not necessarily correct, just like in the US. They project the anti-Netanyahu bloc ahead but with Likud (Netanyahu’s party) the largest single party. (That can matter for who gets first shot at forming a government; but the decision is solely that of the President.) Critically, neither side has a clear path to a 61 seat majority.

The specifics are 53 seats for the change bloc; 50 seats for the Netanyahu bloc; 17 seats for the two predominantly Arab parties (Joint List and Ra’am).

Note there are several different exit polls out from different TV channels. The exact numbers differ. But as far as I can tell they all agree on change bloc bigger, Likud single largest party. 17 or 18 seats for the two Arab parties, a historic high.

In other words, this is more or less what polls have projected: an inconclusive result that makes it very unclear how either bloc can form a government. If neither can it means another election in the relatively near future.

Again, though, final results can differ significantly from initial exit polls.

We’re coming up on the end of today’s voting in Israel. Historic high turnout is the story of the day. And I would say we still know basically nothing about the outcome. I’ve mentioned a couple times that prediction markets are really only good as distillations of conventional wisdom. But sometimes conventional wisdom can be good to know. On Kalshi today, we’ve seen a new possible prime minister rocketing from nowhere to a 39% probability of winning. And the new guy is “no one.”

A few points on this. I’m a little surprised that “no one” wasn’t ranked higher before because while “no one” has maybe not been the most likely outcome there have been very good chances of his winning for weeks or months. Also remember that in case “no one” wins and no government can be formed, that actually means Netanyahu remains Prime Minister in a caretaker capacity while a new election is scheduled.

Watching Israel Twitter there are various anti-Netanyahu politicians doing emergency messages, saying we’re behind, rush to the polls, etc. But this is what you say to get people out. And other signals point to equal amounts of desperation on both sides trying to get every last voter to the polls.

Two other points to pay attention to.