His coalition of right-wing, religious parties is projected to garner at least 62 seats, the number of mandates needed to form a majority in the 120-seat Israeli parliament, the Knesset.
Netanyahu’s main rival, interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid party was expected to win only 24 seats, per exit polls, with his bloc of parties that would be willing to support him in forming a government only projected to win 55 seats.
A decisive victory could bring an end to the ongoing cycle of elections. According to Israel’s Central Election Committee, voter turnout was the highest ever since the 1999 election, when Netanyahu, in his first term as prime minister, was defeated by former prime minister Ehud Barak.
Netanyahu previously served as prime minister between 1996-1999 and 2009-2021 and is already Israel's longest-serving prime minister.
He has spent the last year as head of the opposition coalition. Four years ago, Netanyahu, hoping for a decisive election result that would shore up his support broke up the existing government.
He first called for an election in Dec 2018 while embroiled in a high-profile criminal trial over allegations of fraud, bribery, and breach of trust involving lavish gifts and high-stakes business deals with millionaires and national infrastructure companies, hoping that despite the criminal investigations, he was still beloved by the public.
However, following the election in April 2019, he was unable to form a coalition government and was forced to call an unprecedented second election five months later.
Another election in September of 2019 also produced no clear winner which led to a third election in March 2020, which produced a short-lived coalition with current Defense Minister Benny Gantz.
That coalition lasted less than a year before a fourth election was held in March 2021. Netanyahu’s rivals, including the first-ever Arab-Israeli political party, finally defeated him and Naftali Bennett, a former Netanyahu ally, became prime minister.
However, ideological differences led to a breakup of the coalition in June.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Netanyahu delivered a victory speech early Wednesday morning, claiming that the Israeli public has decided and granted him the victory and thanked his supporters for giving him and his coalition a "massive vote of confidence from the Israeli public."
