No changes:
Likud 30
Yesh Atid 17
Shas 9
Blue & White 8
Yamina 7
Lieberman 7
Labor 7
UTJ 7
New Hope 6
RZP 6
Meretz 6
Joint List 6
Ra'am 4
Candidates at risk:
The Joint List continues to fall and is in some ways now more likely than Shas to lose a seat (in contrast to what I said in my tweet of two minutes ago!).
If that's the case, the Likud really might gain a seat at their expense as more votes come in.
Meretz is still in grave danger of losing a seat to Labor. New Hope is still in grave danger of losing a seat to Yamina.
Prior to this update I'd have told you that those two scenarios were getting more unlikely. Now I'm not so sure.
(The latter less likely than the former, I should clarify.)
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With the CEC actively tallying the absentee ballots for #Israelex4, let's talk a bit about how the results might change.
The first thing to realize is that nobody knows how the absentee ballots will lean, because this year they include COVID patients and citizens voting in the airport on their way into the country and other demographically ambiguous groupings.
All we know is that there are more of them. You'll see media outlets claim that the absentee ballots this time are worth 11 or even 13 seats.
This is true but misleading: no one party will get 100% of the absentee ballots.
The party closest to the threshold is Ra'am, but it is not even close to being in danger. We would have to count 916,502 absentee ballots without finding a single Ra'am vote for the party to fall, and there just aren't that many.
Ra'am did however benefit from the one party to fall beneath the threshold: The New Economic Party could have had enough votes to receive one seat, but that seat went to Ra'am instead.
Right now Ra'am's lost seats go to the Likud (2), Yamina, and Sa'ar (1 each).
If we stopped counting votes now, this would be the most damaging fall below the threshold in Israel's history. ALL FOUR SEATS went to right-wing parties. We have never seen a bloc lose more than two.
In advance of reporting on the #Israelex4 results tonight, here's a thread of frequently asked questions that I get every election. I will be adding to it periodically over the course of the day.
Q: Why don't you cover exit polls?
A: Exit polls in any election are problematic; it's well known they are usually less accurate than the final pre-election polls (though Israel's polling moratorium law mitigates that somewhat).
But this cycle's exit polls will be even less useful than usual. Thanks to the pandemic, the CEC set up extra ballot boxes to prevent crowding and infection.
So I will be particularly insistent on ignoring them this time around.