Likud files police complaint against Eisenkot campaign manager over Polymarket post

Likud claims Eisenkot’s campaign manager broke election law by sharing a Polymarket forecast giving Eisenkot a 52% chance of becoming prime minister, versus 28% for Netanyahu.

Likud filed a police complaint on Monday against Ronen Manelis, campaign manager for Gadi Eisenkot, accusing him of breaking Israel’s election campaigning law by sharing a post on X that gave Eisenkot strong odds of becoming prime minister after the upcoming election. Attorney Ilan Bombach filed the complaint on Likud’s behalf.

At the center of the complaint is a Polymarket post that Manelis reshared on his X account on Sunday. The post said that former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, who heads the Yashar party, is expected to become Israel’s next prime minister after Tuesday’s election, replacing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It gave Eisenkot a 52% chance of winning the post, compared with 28% for Netanyahu, and included a photo of Eisenkot in IDF uniform.

The complaint included a screenshot of Manelis’s repost, showing the original Polymarket post, the figures and a chart comparing Eisenkot’s and Netanyahu’s chances.

Likud claims Manelis shared post without clarifying context

Likud argues that the figures do not come from a public opinion poll conducted using accepted statistical methods, but from a platform that forecasts the outcomes of future events. Even so, the complaint claims, Manelis shared them without making clear that they were not a statistical survey and could not be used to draw conclusions about voting patterns or public opinion.

The figures reflect the probability of a political outcome, not a candidate’s level of support among voters. Eisenkot’s 52% chance of becoming prime minister does not mean that 52% of the public plans to vote for him.

In his letter to the police, Bombach stressed that, in Likud’s view, this is not merely a technical violation, but an attempt to influence voters through illegal means.

Post was shared 'to influence the voting public," complaint claims

The complaint claims the offense was committed “in order to influence the voting public, under aggravating circumstances and through prohibited means.” Likud views it as especially serious that the post was shared by Manelis, who runs the campaign of one of the candidates. “There is a significant and pressing public interest in investigating and bringing the offender to justice,” the complaint said, calling on police to investigate the post and pursue charges to the full extent of the law.

However, the claim that Polymarket’s figures count as an election poll under the law is Likud’s own legal interpretation, not a ruling by any authority. The question is a substantive one, since the platform presents the probability of future outcomes rather than the results of an opinion poll. Whether the law’s rules on publishing election polls apply to this kind of data may prove central to how the complaint is handled.