Israelis head to the polls today for a general election in which electorate will vote a new prime minister.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fighting for his political survival.

As expected, analysts are speaking on the chances of the front runners.

Benjamin Netanyahu is running for his fifth term in office. If re-elected, he will overtake Israel’s founding father David Ben-Gurion in July as the country’s longest-serving prime minister.

However, Mr Netanyahu is facing both serious corruption charges, pending a final hearing with the attorney general, and his toughest competitor in years – Benny Gantz.

Mr Gantz, a former chief of staff for the Israeli military who is a newcomer to politics, can rival Mr Netanyahu on security – one of the election’s key issues – and promises cleaner politics.

His centrist Blue and White alliance – formed with two other former military chiefs and the former TV anchor-turned-politician Yair Lapid – was initially doing slightly better than Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party in opinion polls, although the situation has since reversed.

The close race is leading to an aggressive and often dirty election campaign with lots of smear attempts. Israeli voters tend to decide who to support on the basis of the candidates’ personalities, rather than their policies, and whether they consider them strong leaders.

No single party in Israel has ever won a majority of seats in parliament; the country has always had coalition governments.

That means the prime minister is not always the person whose party wins the most votes, but the person who manages to bring together enough parties to control at least 61 of the 120 seats in the Knesset.

Some polls suggest that Mr Netanyahu is more likely to be able to form a coalition than Mr Gantz because of the prime minister’s close relationship with other right-wing parties and religious parties.

In a widely criticised move to lock down extra right-wing seats, Mr Netanyahu brokered a deal making it easier for candidates from an extreme-right wing party that many view as racist to enter parliament.