Israel’s Knesset elections are set to take place in just six days. With under a week to go, and incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud neck-and-neck with Benny Gantz’s Kachol Lavan, what can we expect to see on election day?

Voting begins at 7:00am and ends at 10:00pm (exit polls can be expected around this time, 4:00pm on EST/1:00pm PST). In the last Knesset election, voter turnout was 71.8 percent (compare that with 56 percent in the 2016 American presidential election). Levels of participation differ between Jewish Israelis and Palestinian-Israelis. In national races, Jewish Israelis vote at significantly higher rates (76 percent in 2015) than Palestinian citizens of Israel (63.5 percent in 2015). Some polling indicates that Palestinian-Israeli voter turnout could fall as low as 58 or even 50 percent on April 9, likely a result of the predominantly Arab Joint List’s dissolution, disaffection over anti-Arab rhetoric, and apathy.

Regardless of whether one chooses to vote or not, Knesset elections are a paid national holiday in Israel. 180,000 Israelis visited national parks the day of the 2018 municipal elections, the first time Israel designated local elections a national holiday.

Israelis will not wake up on April 10 knowing for sure who their next prime minister will be, though they will have a far clearer picture. Israelis vote for political parties, not specific candidates, so seats in the Knesset are apportioned according to the percentage of the national vote each list receives. Any faction receiving more than 3.25 percent (the electoral threshold) will receive at least four seats.

With so many parties, no one list will come out with a majority. Because of this, an aspiring Israeli prime minister must form a coalition government with other smaller parties in order to hold a majority in the Knesset (at least 61 of 120 seats). After election day, the president of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, will consult with the heads of parties with seats in the next Knesset and solicit recommendations for the premiership. A party can recommend any member of Knesset as prime minister, including their own leader or the head of a different party. A party can also refuse to offer any recommendation, as the Joint List did in 2015, or recommend a candidate but refrain from joining the government (the Palestinian-Israeli Hadash-Ta’al bloc has presented this as a possibility in the current election). The president will consider recommendations, as well as the size of each of the parties in determining whom to offer the task of forming a government. There is no hard and fast rule here. Although tradition would suggest the party with the most seats gets the first shot at coalition-building, the president has a fair amount of discretion in this regard.

Once a member of Knesset is charged with forming a government, they will have 28 days with the possibility of a 14 day extension. This means that even if the candidate Rivlin selects is able to build a coalition, they could take until late May to finish the job. Note that in 2015, Benjamin Netanyahu completed coalition negotiations less than two hours before the deadline.

If the chosen MK is unable to build a coalition, the president can reassign the task to a different candidate. Notably, in 2009, Tzipi Livni’s now-defunct Kadima party received more seats than Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, but it was Netanyahu who successfully created a coalition after Livni failed on the first attempt. Whether Benny Gantz or Benjamin Netanyahu can form a coalition will likely depend on which of the smaller parties pass the threshold, a question that hinges on a relatively small number of votes: If a party gets 3.15 percent of the vote, they will receive zero mandates, while 3.25 percent would yield them four.

Smaller parties will seek to shape the next government’s agenda, demanding influential ministerial portfolios in exchange for supporting a candidate as prime minister. A coalition that is too narrow (such as one with just 61 seats) means the prime minister will be beholden to the individual whims of each party, as just one party leaving could bring down the whole government. On the other hand, a very large coalition could be unwieldy as a prime minister is forced to manage the divergent interests of various factions. Coalition partners can also be added after the government is formed. In 2015, Benjamin Netanyahu built a government with 61 seats, later negotiating the inclusion of Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu in spring 2016.

As far as who will win, polling offers an accessible indicator of how the election turns out, and I certainly recommend Israel Policy Forum’s own #120Project polling tools. However, polling can only provide a rough projection of the election results. There are still undecided voters, not to mention the issue of using surveys with a four percent margin of error in an election with a 3.25 percent threshold. Public polling is banned in Israel five days before election day (meaning the last public polls come out tomorrow) in an effort to insulate citizens from external pressure at the ballot box. So when assessing how things will look after April 9, be sure to temper your expectations, but don’t rule anything out either.