Ynet: Netanyahu wakes up to shock election victory

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been trailing his Zionist Union opponent in the polls leading up to the elections, the real-time results on Wednesday morning show the Likud leader enjoying a major advantage over the left-wing’s Isaac Herzog.

A count of 99 percent of the ballot boxes had Likud with 30 seats and Zionist Union with 24. The Joint Arab List placed third behind the two major parties with 14 seats. Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid received 11 seats.

Moshe Kahlon, lauded as this election cycle’s kingmaker, received 10 seats in the count, with Bayit Yehudi maintaining its eight seats, Yisrael Beytenu with six seats, United Torah Judaism and Shas at 7, Meretz dropping to 4.

A slightly more accurate count on other Hebrew news sites has the Likud with 29 - in the end, it’s almost the polar opposite of the 4-5 mandate lead that was actually projected according to nearly all the polls leading to yesterday (for the Zionist Union rather than the Likud)…