Even working on the assumption that the results will hold up, Netanyahu’s path to forming a coalition is still strewn with challenges

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With exit polls from all four major television channels showing the bloc led by Binyamin Netanyahu winning between 61 and 62 seats, the center-right has reason to be cheerful at this hour.

The polls show the Likud capturing 30-31 seats – a somewhat disappointing showing – and  Yesh Atid should end up with around 24.

However, when adding in the tallies of the Likud’s most likely coalition partners, Netanyahu should get the first crack at forming a majority coalition and returning as Israel’s prime minister.

The Religious Zionists appear to have won between 12 and 14 seats and will be the Knesset’s third largest party.

The chareidi parties outperformed expectations.

Shas appears to have won an extra seat, boosting its Knesset representation to 10 (most polls showed them dropping to 8) while UTJ maintained its strength at 7, with one poll (Direct Polls) predicting 8 for UTJ. To no one’s surprise, Ayelet Shaked, the last tattered remnant of Naftali Bennett’s reign failed to pass the threshold.

Turnout exceeded 70%, the highest since the 1999 elections. Despite higher-than-expected turnout in the Arab sector, just two of the three major Arab parties passed the threshold of 3.25% of the vote required to gain Knesset representation. If the actual results resemble the exit polls, Arab representation will drop from 10 to 9 seats and the Ra’am party, which was a member of the Bennett-Lapid government, will be firmly in the opposition.

However, two exit polls updated their findings an hour after the initial exit poll was released, showing that the third Arab party – Balad – might indeed pass the threshold, and that could change the entire picture as seats would have to be redistributed.

Placing too much reliance on the initial exit polls has proven to be a recipe for regret in the past two elections. One reason is that the pollsters compete to announce their findings as soon as the polls close at 10 pm, and to do that, they have to compile their figures at least an hour before the polls officially close. Voting is often heaviest in the last hour, skewing the results.

Even working on the assumption that the results will hold up, Netanyahu’s path to forming a coalition is still strewn with challenges.

Competition for cabinet seats will be stiff and stormy. Likud members who have been waiting patiently in the opposition for almost two years will demand the major ministries remain with them, while the Likud’s senior coalition partner – the religious Zionists – will be expecting at least two major cabinet posts for their leaders, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The inclusion of Ben-Gvir will create complications for Bibi, as an international delegitimization campaign against Ben-Gvir for his politically incorrect views on the Arab-Israeli conflict is well underway. It bears a close resemblance to the pressure that President Clinton and others placed on Netanyahu in the 1990s, which succeeded in keeping Ariel Sharon out of the defense ministry.

The chareidi parties are usually more content to chair parliamentary committees than to demand cabinet positions, but that trend has been changing over the years. UTJ head and political newcomer Yitzchak Goldknopf has dropped broad hints that he’s interested in being finance minister and Shas isn’t going to sit on the sidelines while all of the political goodies are handed out.

In any event, we have a long night of counting votes ahead of us, and final results aren’t expected until sometime on Thursday.