Israeli election so close it could take weeks to declare winner

And Margaret, there's been a record number of votes cast in this election. When can we expect the final result? Well, hopefully tomorrow, Ian. They've now moved on to these votes. They call them the second envelope votes. They're basically the ballots sent in by people who've been authorized to vote away from their home constituencies. So soldiers, diplomats, critical care workers, that kind of thing. But it's a lot of votes. It's about 450,000 votes to count. When they have the results, they'll be broadcast on live television. After that, the president of Israel comes in and is basically going to begin a consultation process with the different parties. And it's up to him to decide who he thinks has the best chance of forming a coalition. And after he invites that person to do so, they'll have 28 days to try and form a government. And that means really it's no joke when people say that this could drag on for quite some time. And forming a coalition isn't going to be easy, Margaret. That's right. You know, you're going to have Benjamin Netanyahu right now trying really hard to woo members of the bloc of opposition parties arrayed against him. Now, a lot of those parties have said there's no way they're going to join a unity government, but he will try on the other hand you have his main challenger Gadi Eisenkot uh who is going to have to make a decision about the Arab Israeli or Palestinian Israeli vote they are the king makers in this and with their support he could come up with the majority to form uh you know the majority block in parliament but uh he has said he won't do that a number of uh of members of that bloc are opposed to the idea of it but the Arab Israeli parties have said listen we are the ones who got the vote out we want to stop Netanyahu from taking power and and we've given you the chance to do that by coming out in the numbers that we did Margaret Evans reporting from Jerusalem tonight