About, Terms and Privacy

Who is behind Project 120, what the forecast is built on, and what to know before using it.

About The data and the law Terms of use License and credit Privacy Accessibility Contact

About

Project 120 is an independent statistical forecast of the election to the 26th Knesset, to be held on 27 October 2026. The forecast is computed by a Bayesian model from every poll officially published on the website of the Central Elections Committee, and updates automatically whenever a new poll is published. The method is described in detail on the main page under "How it works", including a backtest on the 2022 election and a list of every poll that was left out, with the reason.

The project was built and is run by Dr. Aharon Lautman - a consultant in political data, digital and strategy, and former deputy head of the Karnei Shomron local council. In full transparency: Aharon works with political clients and is identified with one side of the map. The project is a personal initiative; it is not funded or commissioned by any party, candidate or organisation, and it is not affiliated with the Central Elections Committee. The model takes no manual input beyond the official polls and the calibration rules described on the site; the same code runs on every poll, from every pollster, regardless of its results. The code is open and can be inspected.

The statistical engine is based on kronikas by Viktor Tisza, the engine behind Hungary's election forecast (szazkilencvenkilenc.hu), in the tradition of FiveThirtyEight in the United States. The adaptation to Israel - the Bader-Ofer method, the electoral threshold, surplus agreements, blocs and the calibration on the 2019-2022 polling errors - is Project 120's own.

The data and the law

Under Section 16E of the Elections (Modes of Propaganda) Law, 1959, every election poll published to the public must be filed with the Central Elections Committee, which publishes it on its website together with the pollster, the commissioning body, fieldwork dates, sample size, sampling error and method. Project 120 reads the polls from there only, as filed, and shows those details next to each poll (in the polls table and on hover over each point in the trend chart). The original files as filed with the Committee are available in the code repository.

Sub-population polls, polls without a vote-intention question and duplicate filings are not included in the model; a full list with reasons appears on the main page. A poll flagged by the quality-control system stays out of the model until a human review.

Poll-publication blackout. The law restricts the publication of poll results in the days before election day. Project 120 does not publish polls: the model relies solely on polls officially published on the Central Elections Committee website, and updates shortly after they are published there. During the blackout, as long as the Committee publishes no new polls, the forecast is not updated with new polls.

Terms of use and disclaimer

The forecast is a statistical estimate based on polls, with stated uncertainty. It is not a poll, not a result and not a prophecy. The ranges and probabilities are part of the forecast, not an add-on to it.
The model knows nothing about events that have not yet happened, actual turnout, or who will form a government. The composition of the blocs is a political definition based on the parties' declarations, not a statistical result.
Use of the site and its data is at the user's own risk. The operator accepts no liability for any damage or decision based on the forecast.
The details shown for each poll are as filed with the Elections Committee by the pollsters; automatic extraction errors are possible, and the system logs and corrects them. Reports of errors are welcome (see Contact).
The forecast must not be presented as a poll result, and must not be attributed to the Elections Committee or to any of the pollsters.

License and credit

Forecast engine: kronikas, Viktor Tisza, licensed under Apache 2.0. The Israeli modifications are documented in the code repository.
Project 120's charts, cards and texts may be reused, including by media and on social networks, under CC BY 4.0 - with the credit "Project 120 / Dr. Aharon Lautman" and a link to project120.co.il.
The election polls themselves belong to the pollsters that conducted them and were published on the Central Elections Committee website.

Privacy policy

The site collects no personal data: no sign-up, no forms, no tracking cookies and no advertising. To know how many people visit and from which countries, the site uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, a measurement service that uses no cookies and does not identify individual users. During the early-access period, the access code is stored in your browser only (localStorage) so you do not have to type it again - it is not sent anywhere. The site is hosted on GitHub Pages; GitHub's privacy policy applies to network traffic to it. If you email us, the message is used only to reply.

Project 120 aims to be accessible to everyone. The site is built with semantic structure, keyboard navigation, high colour contrast and support for light and dark mode according to system settings; the charts are accompanied by tables and text presenting the same data. If you encounter an accessibility problem, we would like to hear and fix it - see Contact.

Contact

Dr. Aharon Lautman · lautman@gmail.com · lautman.org

This page was last updated in September 2026.