Assuming the polls are on target regarding the size of the next ruling party, Netanyahu’s difficulties will begin tonight, after the polls close. His “natural partners,” Shas and Habayit Hayehudi, won’t be submitting so quickly. They’ll extort and make claims and demand guarantees on top of guarantees − all this even before they go to the president to recommend Netanyahu as prime minister. We won’t even talk about Netanyahu’s other potential partners, chief among them Yair Lapid.

Still, unless the sky falls in the electoral sense, Netanyahu is expected to score a respectable political double: Over the past three decades the prime minister has changed after almost every election − since Menachem Begin was re-elected in 1981, Shimon Peres became premier in 1984, Yitzhak Shamir in 1988, Yitzhak Rabin in 1992, Netanyahu in 1996, Ehud Barak in 1999, Ariel Sharon in 2001 ‏(and in 2003, making him the exception‏), Ehud Olmert in 2006 and Netanyahu again in 2009.

Read the article in full in Haaretz.