DEFYING the pollsters, Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud party claimed a clear win in Israel's election on March 17th, dropping just a single seat from 2013. Prior to the vote, Mr Netanyahu appeared to trail his main challenger, Yitzhak Herzog, the leader of Zionist Union, for much of the campaign.

But with only 30 seats gained of the 61 needed to form a government (after a 99% vote count), buildling a coalition will take time. Other right-wing and religious parties supporting Mr Netanyahu (Habayit Hayehudi, Yisrael Beiteinu, Shas and United Torah Judaism) form a total 57 seats if combined with Likud's 30, while Likud's centre-left rivals (Zionist Union, Yesh Atid, Meretz and the Joint List) have 53. The swing vote is held by Moshe Kahlon, a former Likud minister whose new Kulanu Party received about ten seats. Now the bargaining begins, and Mr Netanyahu needs to negotiate either a centre-right or unity-based government.

Israeli party politics have been a tangled affair since the birth of the Jewish state, as parties have split, merged and changed names in baffling fashion from election to election. This splintering and fragmentation has increased since the 1990s (see chart below), and the new Knesset that emerges from this latest election will be as fractious as ever.

Read more on the 2015 result here, and an explanation of Israel's political evolution here.