Israel’s Central Election Committee on Thursday began counting the hundreds of thousands of “double envelopes,” or ballots cast outside assigned polling stations. These absentee votes are estimated to be worth as many as 12 Knesset seats, meaning they could significantly affect the outcome of Tuesday’s election.
As of 8:40 a.m., some 93.4 percent of the non-absentee votes had been counted. Currently, the right-wing bloc has 52 mandates and the center-left bloc has 56. The Yamina and Ra’am parties thus appear to be potential kingmakers.
Voter turnout in this year’s election was 67.2 percent—the lowest in the last four election campaigns.
Central Election Committee head Orly Adas said the final results are likely to come in on Friday.
