Yair Golan’s Democrats posted Israeli political history’s highest primary turnout this month, and pollsters now give the party eleven Knesset seats in an election ninety days away. The 64 year old former general once accused his own country of killing children in Gaza “as a hobby,” and it has not cost him a seat in the polls.
The coalition math ahead hands him something more durable than the premiership: the votes to decide who runs Israel’s police.
A Record Turnout Launches the Democrats’ Bid
More than 97,000 party members voted in the Democrats’ primary this month, over 87 percent of the membership roll, according to a party organizer at the Tel Aviv launch. Organizers call it the biggest turnout for any primary in Israeli political history, both in raw numbers and in participation rate.
Twenty candidates learned their fate together, watching their own faces flash up one by one on a big screen at Tel Aviv’s Namal port complex, a reveal built more like a reality show finale than a constituency count. Among them was Somaya Bashir, an Arab-Israeli candidate mobbed on stage by Jewish colleagues.
Bashir turned terse when asked what the selection meant to her as an Arab citizen. “Why should it mean any more to me as an Arab than the other candidates?” she said. The party’s pitch rests on exactly that premise, that Arab and Jewish citizens are simply candidates, and citizens, alike.
Golan’s party barely existed three years ago. Running as Labor, it won just four seats in the 2022 election that returned Benjamin Netanyahu to power. Rebranded as the Democrats and now led by Golan, a former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) deputy chief of staff, it is polling toward nearly triple that number.
Eisenkot’s Yashar Overtakes Likud for the First Time
Haaretz called it an election season first on July 9: Gadi Eisenkot’s new Yashar party pulling into contention with Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud in a major poll. Eisenkot, a former IDF chief of staff, left the military in 2018 and built his political profile as a blunt critic of the government’s handling of the Gaza war.
By late July, a Maariv poll had Likud down to 20 seats, its weakest showing since June 2025, with Yashar up to 23, a three seat gap. A separate Channel 12 survey put the parties even closer, with Yashar still ahead.
| Party | Leader | Projected Seats |
|---|---|---|
| Yashar | Gadi Eisenkot | 24 |
| Likud | Benjamin Netanyahu | 23 |
| Together | Naftali Bennett | 15 |
| Democrats | Yair Golan | 11 |
| Yisrael Beiteinu | Avigdor Liberman | 9 |
Head to head, the picture is muddier. One poll had Netanyahu and Eisenkot deadlocked at 38 percent each on preferred prime minister. Another had Eisenkot ahead on suitability for the job, 43 percent to 37. Pollsters disagree on the margin. They agree on the direction.
Golan’s Platform Reads Like a List of Netanyahu’s Reversals
Golan’s first announced act in any government would be a state commission of inquiry into the failures of October 7, 2023, the kind Netanyahu has refused to call for nearly three years. His stump speech at the launch stacked up promises that track as a direct reversal of the current government’s record.
- October 7 inquiry: a state commission with real investigative power, something Netanyahu has resisted since the war began.
- Annexation freeze: halting West Bank annexation moves while pursuing what Golan calls an uncompromising fight on terrorism.
- Shabbat transit: public transportation on Saturdays, the Jewish sabbath, currently suspended nationwide.
- Civil marriage: an option for Israelis who cannot or will not marry through the Orthodox rabbinate.
- Haredi conscription: drafting ultra-Orthodox young men into the IDF, ending a decades old exemption.
Netanyahu has spent this year managing, not resolving, two of those same fights. Weeks ago he shelved a transit reform to protect his Haredi deal, the same exemption from military service that Golan wants to end outright.
No Coalition Bloc Reaches the Magic Number
A hundred and twenty seats sit in the Knesset, and 61 form a government. An i24News poll on July 9 had the opposition, including the mostly Arab Joint List and Ra’am parties, reaching that threshold against the coalition’s 59. Three weeks on, with Yashar’s climb, the split had moved again: Zionist opposition parties near 59 on their own, the sitting coalition near 51, and Arab-majority parties holding roughly 10, meaning nobody governs without a deal across that line.
The same arithmetic that built Netanyahu’s 2022 coalition majority could dissolve it in October, with Arab-Israeli parties he has spent years marginalizing holding genuine leverage over whether Eisenkot replaces him. The Arab Center Washington DC, a policy research institute, has already flagged Eisenkot’s coalition dilemma over Arab-aligned votes as a defining fault line of the race.
For Yair Bartigenr, a Tel Aviv tech entrepreneur who has campaigned for the Israeli left for a quarter century, the arithmetic is really about geography.
The Israeli people have a mental Iron Dome that protects them from reality. From the river to the sea there are 15 million people, half Arabs, half Jews, and neither are going anywhere. The two-state solution is the only solution. Until we fix that problem we can’t fix any other problem.
Bartigenr shouted this over the noise of the launch party, borrowing the name of the missile shield that protects Israeli cities every day. Nina Esakov, a party member, made a similar case in blunter terms: “It’s not commonly known internationally that a big part of the population likes Arabs and wants to live alongside them in peace.”
The Portfolio Golan’s Base Wants Most
More than one supporter at the launch said, unprompted, what they actually want from a coalition seat: control of the police, currently run by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister.
Ben-Gvir’s tenure is already under legal challenge. Israel’s High Court of Justice heard petitions in April over his fitness for the post, weighing accusations that he improperly directed police operations against political protesters. The Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem research group, laid out the legal stakes of the court fight over Ben-Gvir’s continued role in a public explainer this year.
Gali Baharav-Miara, Israel’s attorney general, told the court that efforts to stop Ben-Gvir from undermining police independence have failed outright, and that his conduct continues unabated.
A Democrats-held security portfolio would not require Golan to become prime minister. It would only require his party’s seats inside whichever coalition Eisenkot, or conceivably Netanyahu, needs to reach 61.
Could Golan Become Prime Minister?
No. Every published poll this year gives the top job to either Netanyahu or Eisenkot, never to Golan, whose Democrats poll far behind both men’s parties in seats. What Golan is actually chasing is a kingmaker’s leverage, enough votes that no coalition can form in October without his party’s signature.
Efrat Raiten, a sitting Knesset member and one of the party’s highest profile figures, put the ambition in blunter terms: “Security and democracy. We’re the only ones who will fix it, undo everything this government has done, and keep everyone safe.” Fixing it, in her telling, means holding enough seats that nobody can form a government without asking Golan first.
Trust in Israeli Democracy Hasn’t Recovered
The Democrats built their campaign on the idea that Israeli democracy needs saving, and recent survey data backs the premise. An Israel Democracy Institute poll reported by the Times of Israel found just 27 percent of Jewish Israelis and 12 percent of Arab citizens rate the country’s democracy as good or excellent. Trust in the government sits at 25 percent among Jewish respondents.
The Supreme Court fares better: 41 percent trust among Jewish respondents, up from 39 percent the year before, and the same 41 percent among Arab respondents, up sharply from 35.5 percent in 2024.
A separate Israel Democracy Institute flash survey on the protest movement found that nearly a quarter of Israelis had personally joined a demonstration during the three and a half years of protest against the government’s judicial overhaul, and that most respondents believe the movement genuinely slowed that overhaul down.
What Changes Before October 27
The Knesset dissolved on July 17. The election date, October 27, is now fixed by law, the first Israeli vote held on its originally scheduled date since 1988 and the first time a government has completed a full term since 1973.
- Known: The Knesset has dissolved and the vote is locked in for October 27, an on-schedule election Israel has not managed in decades.
- Known: No published poll gives either the sitting coalition or the Zionist opposition a 61 seat majority without outside help.
- Unconfirmed: Whether Eisenkot would govern with Arab-aligned parties rather than exclude them, a dilemma analysts say could decide the race.
- Unconfirmed: Which ministry, if any, the Democrats would demand for their votes, though Golan’s own supporters keep naming the police.
Ninety days from now the polls close. For the first time since Netanyahu returned to power in 2022, his own party trails a rival led by a former general, and cannot reach a majority without a second.
