JERUSALEM — When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for elections in October, he quickly moved to unify his right-wing Likud party with the even more right-wing party of his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman. 
 
 As a result, experts considered the pair a shoo-in to dominate the election. Polls predicted the joint team could gain up to 45 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, Israel’s parliament. 
 
 It was taken as an article of faith that the canny Netanyahu had safeguarded his rightward flank through the union with Lieberman and that, at the very least, he would maintain the 41 seat bloc they hold today. 
 
 While not an outright majority, that kind of win could have led to an easily constructed coalition with the addition of just one mid-sized party from Israel's turnstile stable of them. 
 
 But something has happened on the way to the voting booths, which open on Jan. 22. The latest polls show Netanyahu's Likud down to as low as 32 seats. 
 
 Of course, being the frontrunner — while enviable — carries certain risks, including voter indifference or apathy. 
 
 In addition, the Likud campaign team, once thought of as a well-oiled if not unbeatable machine, has proven itself surprisingly lackluster this electoral season. It has made maladroit errors, such as attacking both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is not seen as a factor in this electoral season, and Israel's own ever-popular President Shimon Peres, in a single weekend. 
 
 Then there's the problem of Netanyahu himself. While seen to be the inevitable future prime minister, he is not widely liked. 
 
 "Many are just not enthusiastic about Netanyahu. But as none of the other party leaders are really considered potential prime ministers, he is seen as the only one who can win," said pollster Rafi Smith in a briefing for journalists. Still, Smith believes the bleed for Likud votes will be staunched, maybe even reversed, before voting day. 
 
 The flip side, of course, is that banking on a Netanyahu win, many Likud voters are allowing their eyes to stray to smaller niche parties. 
 
 It’s "as if there were a direct election for prime minister, and not a matter of who will win the most seats in the Knesset," said Hebrew University political science professor Gidi Rahat, who also estimates that Netanyahu will be the next prime minister, but foresees a period of turbulence. 
 
 "He could get a very low number of mandates, not even a majority in government. And if Lieberman ends up undoing the union with Likud, as he has threatened, it will be even smaller. Given that there are no other options, I think it will be easy for him to be reelected. On the other hand, it will be very hard to govern." 
 
 Assuming the election will be decided on security issues, as most in this country have been, the Likud seems not to have prepared for critiques of its handling of the economy. 
 
 This omission has opened a vulnerable front with the Labor Party, which is seeing something of a rebirth at about 18 projected seats. The upstart and secularist Yesh Atid party of former journalist Yair Lapid is also making inroads, holding steady now at 10 or 11 seats. 
 
 But worst of all for Netanyahu is the predicament of Lieberman, who only days after the election announcement found himself indicted on corruption charges. He was obliged to resign his ministerial job, though not his parliamentary seat. 
 
 The loss of Lieberman left Netanyahu without his shield against attacks from a growingly strident extreme right, and left him floundering with an absent number two man for his list. 
 
 Naftali Bennett, the phenomenon of these elections, deftly stepped in to fill the vacuum left by Lieberman's enforced departure. 
 
 Bennett, 40, was until six weeks ago a complete unknown in the Israeli political scene. A former Netanyahu aide and high-tech wizard who sold his start-up company for $145 million and claims to have devoted most of his post-bonanza shopping to books, "mostly biographies." 
 
 He is a former soldier in Israel's most élite crack army unit. The baby-faced Bennett now incarnates almost every idealized Israeli archetype — and has quickly become Netanyahu's nemesis. 
 
 The latest polls show Bennett's Jewish Home party swelling to 14 seats. 
 
 Bennett is one of the more radical voices on the right and has shown a showman's propensity for drawing media attention by proposing extremist policies, such as the annexation of the West Bank and the "voluntary deportation" of Palestinians. 
 
 He has stepped with seeming confidence into areas of political no man's land, such as denying the need for a Palestinian state, yet remains untested and vague on most details. 
 
 So far, Bennett's worst gaffe was when he thoughtlessly said in a television interview that he would not accept orders to evacuate Jews from their homes in the territories. (In Israel, refusing military orders is a taboo akin to an American candidate acknowledging an illegitimate child.) 
 
 The predictable political and media storm ensued. But, true to the form of the current electoral season, it was the Likud overreaction, which included former Israel Army Chief of Staff and current Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon accusing Bennett of all but treason, which won the media cycle. 
 
 Smith, the pollster, said the Lieberman indictment provoked some voters of Russian origin, a huge Lieberman demographic, and a group the Likud previously thought was in its pocket "to feel disappointed and lose their political bearings somewhat. They are not sure how to take this. The largest percentage of undecideds is found among these Russians — and almost 25 percent of potential voters are still undecided." 
 
 Nine days to go. ||||| A woman votes as her dog stands nearby in Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 17, 2015. Israelis are voting in early parliament elections following a campaign focused on economic issues such as the high... (Associated Press) 
 
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 WHAT'S AT STAKE? 
 
 Voters will elect a 120-member parliament, or Knesset, Israel's 20th. Citizens vote for party lists, not individual candidates. Seats are allocated in the Knesset according to the percentage of the national vote the parties win. 
 
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 WHO IS RUNNING? 
 
 There are 25 parties running. Key parties are the governing Likud Party, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who takes a hard line against the Palestinians and Iran; The Zionist Union, a joint list headed by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni, which wants to resume negotiations with the Palestinians, repair ties with the White House and has emphasized economic issues; The Joint List, a union of Arab parties that is expected to drive up chronically low voter turnout among Israel's Arab minority; Kulanu, led by Likud defector Moshe Kahlon, who has focused on the economy and set his sights on the Finance Ministry; Jewish Home, led by high-tech millionaire Naftali Bennett, Netanyahu's chief rival for the support of West Bank settlers; Yesh Atid, led by former TV personality Yair Lapid, who is also promising relief for the struggling middle class. Two ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties could play key roles after the election. According to a 2014 law, a party must win 3.25 percent of the vote to be represented in parliament. 
 
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 HOW IS A GOVERNMENT FORMED? 
 
 In Israel's 67-year history, no party has ever won an outright majority of 61 seats, and the country has always been governed by a coalition. After the vote, Israel's president meets with party leaders to determine who has the best chance of forming a government. The president then taps the head of that party, usually but not necessarily parliament's largest, to undertake that task. That person will have up to six weeks to form a coalition. If successful, he or she becomes prime minister; if not, the president chooses another party to try. The president could also ask the leaders of the two biggest parties to form a unity government. 
 
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 WHAT ARE THE ELECTION-DAY LOGISTICS? 
 
 There are 5,881,696 eligible voters. Most of the 10,119 polling stations across the country open at 7 a.m. (05:00 GMT; 1 a.m. EST) and close at 10 p.m. (20:00 GMT; 4 p.m. EST). Exit polls will be released immediately after voting ends, and official results will trickle in throughout the night. Voter turnout in the last election in 2013 was 67.8 percent. Election Day is a national holiday, and most workers have the day off. 
 
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 WHAT ARE ISRAEL'S DEMOGRAPHICS? 
 
 Population: 8.2 million, of whom 75 percent (6.2 million) are Jews, 20 percent (1.7 million) are Arabs and the rest are classified as "others," most of them non-Jewish immigrants. Per capita GDP is $36,051. ||||| What space has been devoted to the race has emphasized the lackluster nature of the campaign and its foregone conclusion. 
 
 Obama and Netanyahu meeting in NY, Sept. 2011 Photo: Reuters 
 
 WASHINGTON – It is possible that the American press would have paid more attention to the Israeli election had it not coincided with the installation of its own executive leadership. 
 
 But it is unlikely. 
 
 The vote in Israel falls one day after United States President Barack Obama’s second inauguration, which has dominated US media coverage over the past week. What space has been devoted to the race in Israel, has emphasized the lackluster nature of the campaign and its foregone conclusion – not exactly stop-the-presses kinds of stories. 
 
 In perhaps the clearest sign that the elections have been viewed as less-than-gripping news cycle fodder, a recurrent theme in the relatively few stories that have been published here is what’s not being discussed in the campaign, rather than what is. 
 
 Both The New York Times and Washington Post on Monday ran stories, well inside the paper, about the lack of debate on certain topics. 
 
 In a Memo from the Middle East titled “An Unusual Election for Its Non-issues,” The Times detailed the lack of details being provided on policies, noting that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu hadn’t even produced a formal platform. 
 
 
 
 The Washington Post summed up its story with the headline: “In Israeli election, Iran issue avoided.” 
 
 And if Israeli politicians aren’t tackling big issues with global implications, why would the media an ocean away pay them much heed? Iran, Syria, Al-Qaida remain major concerns in America. 
 
 But in contrast to all these actors, who are driving new developments each day, Israel has remained static on these issues during the course of the election, and there is no sense that the elections have provided clues to what course the next government could take on these subjects. 
 
 With Obama re-taking his place in the Oval Office and Netanyahu all-but-certain to remain prime minister, even the popular storyline of dysfunction and disagreement between the two leaders only makes for well-trod ground. 
 
 Though the discord could well continue – and certainly the tensions over the announcement of construction plans in E-1, put forward by Netanyahu, at least in part to neutralize a political challenge on his right, point in that direction – it is also the case that after four years of sparring, the two wearied men could instead opt for accommodation. 
 
 Then the media would have even fewer stories to write on the US-Israel relationship.
– It's election day in Israel, but there's not a lot of intrigue: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is almost certain to win another term, although his ticket (a joint ticket combining his conservative Likud Party with the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu) could lose as many as 10 of the seats it currently holds in Parliament, perhaps to Jewish Home, a party that is further to the right. Despite the foregone conclusion, YNetNews reports that the country is seeing its highest voter turnout since 1999, and the election could end up breaking voting records in Israel. The New York Times reports that voter participation had previously been dropping steadily, perhaps due to voter fatigue (Israel held five general elections, plus a direct ballot for prime minister, between 1992 and 2009); it was at less than 65% in 2009. This year, the Central Elections Committee ran a rousing voter drive, and President Shimon Peres urged everyone to vote. The Jerusalem Post notes that US media don't seem to care about the Israeli vote, perhaps because it falls on the day after President Obama's second inauguration. Most US coverage has focused on the less-than-exciting nature of the race and the lack of debate in Israel on some topics—for example, Netanyahu's failure to produce a formal platform.