The results also signaled a continuing shift of the Israeli electorate toward the right wing, which supports West Bank settlements and opposes concessions in peace talks with the Palestinians. That trend was highlighted by the strong showing of an ultranationalist anti-Arab religious party.

After three previous inconclusive elections, Netanyahu had been hoping for a decisive victory that would allow him to form a government with his traditional ultra-Orthodox and hard-line nationalist allies and seek immunity from corruption charges.

In an address to supporters early Wednesday, a subdued Netanyahu boasted of a “great achievement” but stopped short of declaring victory. Instead, he appeared to reach out to his opponents and called for formation of a “stable government” that would avoid another election.

“We must not under any circumstances drag the state of Israel to new elections, to a fifth election,” he said. “We must form a stable government now.”

By early Wednesday, updated exit polls on two channels were forecasting an evenly divided parliament. The third station gave Netanyahu’s opponents a one-seat advantage.

Exit polls have often been imprecise in the past, meaning the final results, expected in the coming days, could still shift the balance of power. If the final results are in line with the exit polls, there is no guarantee that Netanyahu or his opponents will succeed in putting together a coalition.

“All three options are on the table: a Netanyahu-led government, a change coalition that will leave Netanyahu in the opposition, and an interim government leading to a fifth election,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute.

Several right-wing parties have vowed never to sit in a government with Netanyahu. And Naftali Bennett, a former Netanyahu ally turned harsh critic, refused to endorse either side during the campaign.

Bennett shares Netanyahu’s hard-line nationalist ideology and would seem to be more likely to ultimately join the prime minister. But Bennett has not ruled out joining forces with Netanyahu’s opponents.

In a speech to his supporters, Bennett declined to take sides. He vowed to promote right-wing values but also took several veiled swipes at the prime minister’s leadership style.

“Now is the time for healing,” he said. “The norms of the past will no longer be acceptable.” He said he would move the country “from leadership that is interested in itself to a professional leadership that cares.”

Bennett has indicated he will drive a hard bargain with Netanyahu, demanding senior Cabinet ministries and perhaps even a power-sharing arrangement that includes a stint as prime minister.

In addition, their partners would also include a pair of ultra-Orthodox religious parties and the “Religious Zionists,” a party whose leaders are openly racist and homophobic. One of its leaders, Itamir Ben-Gvir, is a disciple of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach party was branded a terrorist group by the U.S. for its anti-Arab racism before Kahane was assassinated in New York in 1990.

Relying on the party could be deeply embarrassing for Netanyahu on the international stage, particularly as he tries to court the new Biden administration.

The election campaign was largely devoid of substance and was seen instead as a referendum on Netanyahu’s divisive rule.

During the campaign, Netanyahu emphasized Israel’s highly successful coronavirus vaccination campaign. He moved aggressively to secure enough vaccines for Israel’s 9.3 million people, and in three months the country has inoculated some 80% of its adult population. That has enabled the government to open restaurants, stores and the airport just in time for election day.

He also tried to portray himself as a global statesman, pointing to the four diplomatic accords he reached with Arab countries last year. Those agreements were brokered by his close ally, then-President Donald Trump.

Netanyahu’s opponents say the prime minister bungled many other aspects of the pandemic, particularly by allowing his ultra-Orthodox allies to ignore lockdown rules and fuel a high infection rate for much of the year.

Over 6,000 Israelis have died from Covid-19, and the economy continues to struggle with double-digit unemployment.

They also point to Netanyahu’s corruption trial, saying someone who is under indictment for serious crimes is not fit to lead the country. Netanyahu has been charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in a series of scandals that he dismisses as a witch hunt by a hostile media and legal system.

Even Netanyahu’s reputation as a statesman has suffered in recent days. The United Arab Emirates, the most important of the four Arab nations to establish official diplomatic ties with Israel, last week made clear that it did not want to be used as part of Netanyahu’s re-election bid after he was forced to call off a visit to the country. The Biden administration also has kept its distance, a contrast to the support he received in past elections from Trump.

Netanyahu’s Likud party was projected to emerge as the largest individual party, with just over 30 seats in the 120-seat parliament, followed by the centrist opposition party Yesh Atid, with some 17 seats.

The remainder of the parliament would be divided between some 10 other small parties. These range from an Arab party to left-wing secular parties to a pair of secular, right-wing parties that oppose Netanyahu.

Altogether, Netanyahu and his allies were projected to control 53 to 54 seats, while his opponents are expected to control some 60 or 61, with Bennett controlling the remainder.

Netanyahu’s opponents included a diverse array of parties that had little in common beyond their shared animosity toward him. Even if his opponents end up controlling a majority of seats, it will be difficult for them to bridge their ideological differences on such lightning rod issues as Palestinian statehood and the role of religion in the country.

They also were hurt by the disintegration of the main Arab party in parliament. A renegade member ran separately but appeared not to win enough seats to enter parliament, robbing the alliance of key votes.

Tuesday’s election was sparked by the disintegration of an emergency government formed last May between Netanyahu and his chief rival at the time. The alliance was plagued by infighting, and elections were forced after they failed to agree on a budget in December.

Netanyahu’s opponents have accused him of fomenting deadlock in hopes of bringing about a friendlier parliament that will grant him immunity from prosecution.

After the results come in, attention will turn to the country’s figurehead president, Reuven Rivlin.

He will hold a series of meetings with party leaders and then choose the one he believes has the best chance of forming a government as his prime minister-designate. That could set off weeks of horse-trading.

Voting in Jerusalem on Tuesday, Rivlin said the deadlock has had a price.

Besides, Republicans say, Biden should know better after more than 30 years as a senator, as Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, put it.

“He was in the Congress a long time,” Blunt said in an interview. “He knows it’s the Congress’ job to authorize how the money is spent and the president’s job to spend it efficiently.”

Even if GAO decides Biden has illegally halted border wall funding, he is unlikely to face any formal punishment, particularly not the blowback and impeachment Trump went through after the former president halted Ukraine aid without Congress’s say-so. The White House also notes that Biden’s hold differs in several key ways from Trump’s move to lock up the foreign assistance, which GAO deemed illegal last year.

Biden’s proclamation in January “set this process in motion in a public, transparent way, while directing agencies to comply with appropriations law,” an OMB spokesperson said.

The probe highlights the challenge presidents have historically faced in fulfilling campaign promises that require money to be spent — or suspended — at odds with Congress’ intent. During his administration, Trump shifted money away from accounts for things like military construction projects to pay for the border barrier as he struggled to get congressional Democrats to agree to the funding levels needed to build the “big, beautiful wall” he promised his supporters. Now Biden is facing trouble in trying to turn off that funding spigot after saying last year that “not another foot of wall” would be constructed during his administration.

“The Biden administration has to be really careful about doing stuff like this, because otherwise they’re just going to be doing the exact thing the Trump administration did — just at the other end of the policy spectrum,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, a manager at the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight.

In Biden’s defense, administration officials make two main arguments.

First they say, halting funding for the border wall was needed to buy the administration time to come up with a plan for spending the money. An OMB spokesperson called it “a necessary and responsible step for prudent management of federal funds,” considering the bevy of ongoing lawsuits against Trump’s project.

White House officials add that the pause on funding has been formal and public, with plenty of time left to legally spend that cash and clear instructions that federal agencies must follow spending law. In contrast, they note, Trump tried to secretly seize funding like the Ukraine aid in 2019 and permanently tie up government money by taking action right before the annual spending deadline.

The Senate Republicans who asked GAO to weigh in on Biden’s funding move said “billions in lawfully appropriated dollars … sit unused by the Biden administration,” which amounts to a violation of a 1974 law that curbs a president’s power to alter funding Congress provides.

“A lot of us agree that the border wall was a very stupid idea — a waste of money — but Congress decided to waste the money on that,” said Hedtler-Gaudette. “The way to address that is not to have the executive branch override the legislative branch.”

Legality aside, congressional leaders say both Trump and Biden’s funding actions illustrate the need for more transparency and teeth in federal budget law.

Under the leadership of progressive Democrat John Yarmuth, the House Budget Committee “is determined to reassert and strengthen Congress’ power of the purse” and “will review GAO’s response to the senators’ inquiry,” a committee spokesperson said.

The Kentucky congressman also plans to reintroduce legislation that would “increase transparency around executive spending,” the aide said. It’s unclear if the Biden administration will support the bill, which would require OMB to make public its instructions for spending money, shedding light on the administration’s funding decisions in a change that some advocates believe is necessary regardless of who is president.

Even though the Government Accountability Office determined that Trump’s budget office violated the law when it froze U.S. military aid to Ukraine, the former president faced no penalty and was acquitted on impeachment charges of abusing his power by withholding the foreign assistance.

“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” GAO wrote early last year.

The Trump administration’s decision to impede hundreds of billions of dollars in military assistance to Ukraine happened behind closed doors until POLITICO broke the news in August 2019. OMB had used what’s known as an apportionment footnote to hold up that money, which was released only a few weeks before it was set to expire.

Trump’s OMB chalked it up to a “programmatic delay,” an often-legitimate reason for spending pauses that the Government Accountability Office vehemently swatted down, citing the president’s policy and political ambitions as congressional Democrats accused Trump of leveraging the funds to damage Biden’s image ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

Trump’s budget office also used the same tactics to enact a number of other policy goals, including a halt to funding for the World Health Organization amid accusations that it bungled the global response to the coronavirus pandemic and gave too much deference to China.

Drawing a distinction between Trump’s actions and Biden’s move, a current OMB official told POLITICO that the White House budget office under the new president has never used that apportionment tool to freeze money for border wall construction. A bipartisan government funding package signed into law late last year included $1.4 billion for the wall, in line with what Congress gave Trump through previous spending packages.

Biden’s pause — which his administration also characterized as a “programmatic delay” — was announced publicly via presidential proclamation. The administration has also promised to release the money if the pause violated congressional intent.

The Biden administration still plans to spend the border wall funds, and agencies could ultimately divvy up the dollars for other wall-related purposes allowed by law, like fencing repairs.

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

Duckworth’s promised opposition — which she said would not include “diversity nominees” like those backed by the Congressional Asian Pacific American, Hispanic, or Black Caucuses — comes as Asian American lawmakers and advocates have expressed frustration about their lack of representation in Biden’s Cabinet. Members of the Hill’s Asian Pacific American Caucus had pushed for nominees like Vivek Murthy and Julie Su to be appointed as Cabinet secretaries, but Murthy ended up nominated as Surgeon General and Su as the deputy Labor secretary.

Although none of Biden’s Cabinet secretaries are of Asian American or Pacific Islander descent, U.S. trade representative Katherine Tai is of Chinese American descent and technically occupies a Cabinet-level position. Asian American Neera Tanden’s nomination to become Biden’s budget chief fell apart after opposition from Republican senators and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).

Another Asian American Democratic senator, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, said later Tuesday that “I am prepared to join” Duckworth in pushing back on Biden’s nominees until senior posts in his administration incorporate better Asian American representation.

“This is not about pitting one diversity group against another,” Hirono said on MSNBC. “I think this is a well-articulated, focused position.”

Asked Tuesday about the senators’ threats, Biden told reporters, “We have the most diverse Cabinet in history. We have a lot of Asian Americans that are in the Cabinet and in sub-Cabinet levels.”

White House senior adviser Cedric Richmond on Tuesday evening said the administration has been “very consistent that we value diversity,” pointing to the roles of Murthy, Tai and Harris. Related to Tanden’s nomination, he quoted a Biden refrain: “Show me your budget, and I will show you your values.”

“We are appointing more Asian Americans to key positions, so we’re very confident that we will continue to do that,” Richmond told CNN. “And of course we respect Sen. Duckworth and Sen. Hirono very much. Their feelings matter to us, their opinions matter to us and the fact that they are of the opinion that they are not seeing enough, we will take that to heart and we will continue to do what we were doing in terms of making sure our Cabinet looks like the country.”

Most Biden nominees set for Senate consideration this week are of diverse backgrounds, including assistant health and human services secretary Rachel Levine, deputy treasury secretary Adewale Adeyemo, and deputy budget director Shalanda Young. Duckworth’s declaration could be tested once, during the vote on deputy secretary David Turk, but Turk’s confirmation is not expected to falter given his level of GOP support.

One beleaguered Biden Pentagon nominee, Colin Kahl, could see his fortunes affected by Duckworth’s promised blockade if it persists. The Senate Armed Services Committee has yet to advance Kahl’s nomination.

Asked what appointments the Biden administration could consider an Asian American nominee for, Duckworth suggested the FCC, the Office of Management and Budget or a future Cabinet secretary spot.

Benjamin Din contributed to this report.