CEC announces ‘almost final’ results, Gantz leads by two seats

The Committee explained that the results cannot be considered official, since official results will only be presented to President Reuven Rivlin and published on September 25.

SEPTEMBER 20, 2019 04:35

Central Elections Committee counts "double envelope" ballot slips, Sept. 2019 (photo credit: YITZHAK HARARI) — Central Elections Committee counts "double envelope" ballot slips, Sept. 2019

(photo credit: YITZHAK HARARI)

The Central Election Committee (CEC) announced around 1:30 a.m. Friday the “almost final” results of the elections. The results confirmed the latest results reported, giving Benny Gantz’s Blue and White 33 seats and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud 31 seats.

The committee explained that the results cannot be considered official, since official results will only be presented to President Reuven Rivlin and published on September 25.

According to the statement, the votes that were cast in 14 polling stations are not included in the final count yet, after the election day in those stations was marred by events that might have affected the voting process. Furthermore, the ballots from one station were entirely brought to the CEC and are to be counted there after an attempt to forge extra ballots was uncovered.

In the next few days, the committee is also going to reexamine the results in about 2,000 polling stations, partly selected randomly and partly based on episodes occurred on Election Day.

Over 4,431,000 votes were cast.

The current results according to CEC are:

Blue and White: 1,148,700 – 25.93% – 33 seats

Likud: 1,111,535 – 25.09% – 31 seats

The Joint List: 470,611 – 10.62% – 13 seats

Shas: 329,834 - 7.44% – 9 seats

Yisrael Beytenu: 309.688 – 6.99% – 8 seats

UTJ: 268.688 – 6.06% – 8 seats

Yamina: 260.339 – 5.88% – 7 seats

Labor-Gesher: 212.529 – 4.80% – 6 seats

Democratic Union: 192.261 – 4.34% – 5 seats

Otzma Yehudit: 83,266 – 1.88% (did not pass the electoral threshold of 3.25%)