Those voters waiting inside polling stations will be permitted to vote after 10:00pm when polls closed but those on line outside polling stations were be turned away.

While final tabulations will take some time, it appears that Nir Barkat will be the next mayor of Jerusalem, with predictions handing the race to the secular candidate with an 8-10% advantage. The nationwide voter turnout was over 40%.

Barkat campaign officials called on elections officials to extend the voting for an hour. A decision was not announced at the time of this article. A Channel 1 exit poll declares Barkat the victor with 50% of the vote and Porush with 42%.

This poll does not take two factors into consideration – if the Gaydamak vote, modest as it may be, took votes from Porush or Barkat. The second factor, the Channel 1 poll assumes all non-frum voters supported Barkat, not Porush.

Other analysts report that Gaydamak may have taken 6-8% of the vote, which was pulled from Barkat, which will result in Porush becoming the next mayor, despite the Channel 1 exit poll.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)