On Tuesday, Otzma Yehudit party leader and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir declined to enter into a vote-surplus-sharing arrangement with People of Israel party leader Ofer Winter, posting on X that he viewed Winter as a repeat of former prime minister and B'Yachad party leader Naftali Bennett and that this comparison formed the basis for his party's position against formalising such an agreement. By framing a vote for Winter as equivalent to backing Bennett, Ben-Gvir drew a direct political line between the two candidates.
In a public statement addressed to Ben-Gvir, Winter called on the minister to conduct himself with greater maturity. Addressing his audience, he argued that voters had lost patience with empty political manoeuvres and the overall conduct of public life, before pointing to what he described as an internal contradiction in his opponent's position — the same person who had declared the elections to be of real consequence was, in his telling, treating cast ballots as though they carried little weight, while directing an effort against a figure on the right who had, according to him, absorbed personal costs that very few others across the country had been made to bear; that effort, he contended, was failing to build meaningful support and would bring no advantage to the right-wing bloc, amounting in the end to an attack on political allies rather than on those who stood in opposition. Those holding conservative views have voiced opposition to this method, according to available accounts.
Winter argued that a unified and resilient Israeli public was the foundation for any broad coalition government to take shape.
A Tuesday poll by Walla projected Otzma Yehudit at eight Knesset seats, while People of Israel appeared set to fall short of the 3.25 percent parliamentary entry threshold, drawing an estimated 2.8 percent of ballots cast.
A number of parties sharing political alignment have entered into vote-surplus-transfer arrangements. On 6 October — roughly three weeks ahead of the 27 October polling date — Likud, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Religious Zionist Party, whose chair Bezalel Smotrich holds the finance portfolio, completed a formal agreement to pool surplus votes between the two parties. Shas and United Torah Judaism — the two haredi parties holding seats in the Knesset — formalised a surplus vote-sharing arrangement on Sunday in preparation for the 27 October elections, with both groups committing to work together in the incoming parliament.
On 11 September, Hadash-Ta'al and Ra'am formalised a surplus vote-sharing arrangement, with both parties stating the pact was designed to bolster their standing in the distribution of leftover mandates and lower the chance of votes going unrepresented. Pact documents covering surplus vote-sharing were signed by all four parties within the opposition bloc on 10 September. Four pacts took shape among the competing factions: Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar party entered into a formal electoral arrangement with Yair Golan's The Democrats, while Naftali Bennett's B'Yachad movement concluded a separate accord with Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu.
Under the terms of such deals, leftover votes that neither side uses in the initial distribution of parliamentary seats are combined into a shared pool. Where the pooled remainder across both parties adds up to enough votes for an additional seat, that seat can be allocated to one of them, potentially boosting the overall strength of their alliance. The arrangement carries weight only if both sides clear the minimum vote threshold required for parliamentary entry. Polling numbers for each of the four opposition bloc parties have consistently sat above that threshold.
