It’s not just UK politics that’s dominating the headlines for the wrong reasons. Israel is close behind — with the country heading to polls for the fifth time in just over four years on November 2.

After barely a year in power, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet had announced in June that he would be dissolving parliament and calling for fresh elections. But with exit polls showing no clear majority for any of the coalitions, the question of who will be the next leader of the Middle-Eastern country is not clear. No government has completed its four-year term in Israel since 1988.

Who will be the next PM: It's complicated

While Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party will once more emerge as the biggest party in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, his coalition of right-wing allies may fall short of the 61 seats needed for a majority by just a single seat.

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Caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party on the other hand will come in second with anywhere between 24-25 seats, but his disparate coalition, which has mostly come together just to prevent Netanyahu from returning to power, may not have the numbers to reach the majority either. Former Israeli general Benny Gantz, may also be a dark-horse contender for the position of the PM even though his party may only manage to secure 12-14 seats.

The opposition against Netanyahu is mostly on account of a laundry list of corruption allegations against him, his close associates and his government. Several of these charges are being investigated in ongoing trials. But Netanyahu remains the most popular politician in the country by a large margin, courting the country’s far-right voters in recent years. Lapid, a centrist, opposes many of Netanyahu’s policies and aims to prevent his comeback.

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Israel uses a system of voting known as the party-list proportional representation where citizens vote for parties, and parties get a number of seats in the Knesset equal to the proportion of the total votes they receive.

With another gridlock in sight, even a difference of a few thousand votes here and there can determine who becomes the next PM. Israel has a unicameral system with only the lower house. Any party that receives at least 3.25 percent of the electorate vote is guaranteed to win a seat in the Knesset. Due to the low vote threshold, parties need to come together in alliances and coalitions to form a government.

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Behind the scenes

The big kingmakers in the upcoming election may be Itamar Ben-Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party which has been attracting the growing far-right demographic in the country. At the same time, if the country’s Arab population comes out to vote against Netanyahu then things might swing in favour of Lapid or even the United Arab List. The last government saw an Arab being part of the government for the first time in the history of Israel.

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)