Early exit polls from Israel's high-stakes election set off a wave of stunned reactions online, with observers zeroing in on one unexpected kingmaker.
Israel's Channel 12 exit poll put the opposition bloc at 52 seats, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc at 50 and Arab parties at 18, CNN reported Tuesday.
"This is a DRAMATIC result," Omri Marian, an internationally recognized tax law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and an Israeli expat, wrote on Bluesky. "Palestinians with Israeli citizenship hold all the leverage."
Marian then laid out four possible outcomes, including Jewish opposition parties breaking their campaign vow not to partner with Arab parties, another election, a unity government with Netanyahu's Likud party or a short-lived minority coalition. He feared the unity option, under which "Bibi goes free even though he is not PM." "I worry this is where we might end up," he wrote.
UC Irvine political scientist Sara Wallace Goodman asked whether a caretaker government and another election were next. Marian agreed that a minority coalition would send Israel back to the polls "within a few months."
William Adler, a professor of political science at Northeastern Illinois University, was skeptical the math would translate into power. "Seems like the only way to majority government is Arab parties and it won't happen," he wrote. Marian replied, "That's what I worry, but everyone saw it coming."
George Pearkes, a markets strategist, noted that two networks showed Netanyahu's bloc trailing while a third, Channel 14, showed it ahead, adding that turnout two hours before polls closed was the highest since 1988. "Man this is going to be CHAOS," he wrote. Justin Joque, a University of Michigan media scholar, cast doubt on the outlier, noting that Channel 14's pre-election polls had Netanyahu winning even as other surveys moved the opposite way.
Others urged caution. Eric Columbus, a Lawfare senior editor and former Justice Department official, shared a reminder from New York Times correspondent Yair Rosenberg that Israeli exit polls miss the final hours of voting, when the right has sometimes surged. "Too soon to pop any corks?" Columbus asked.