Israeli General Election (2nd of March, 2020): Madness

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In an hour or so we'll get a report of turnout as of 10am. In the meantime here you can determine the party with which your views most closely align:


https://electionsvote.mako.co.il

I got:

Joint List 90%
Meretz-Labor 85%
Blue and White 73%

Sounds about right.

I don't support there's an English translation of the site

Any updates on the 10am turnout?

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Turnout as of 10am was 14.5%. In September it was 15%, April it was 12.9%, and in 2015 it was 13.5%. So pretty average.

Cheers!

Since we have nothing to do but wait, there's a question I always wanted to ask about Likud: how much coherence does it have as a party without Netanyahu as its leader? Are its supporters natural allies with one another ideologically? Does it have a web of internal institutions that help sustain it? Bibi's been the dominating personality in it for so long I've never really been able to tell how much there is (left) underneath him.

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What sort of communities/turnout ought one look out for to detect strength for Likud/Bibi?

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Leaked exit polls show big lead to likud but majority

Link?

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Anyway, Channel 11 is just repeating what we are all waiting on right now via interviews. If Bibi+ or Gantz+ gets an extra mandate, then the situation becomes what we had after round 2 where Lieberman decides the king. If it stays at 60-60, Leib either chooses to return to Bibi or someone gets bribed to the other side. 60-60 is the worst situation right now.

I actually don't understand why everyone is acting like Bibi and the right won. He needs 61 seats to truly win. Anything less is more chaos, deadlock, elections, etc. Obviously KL lost, but without a majority snd without Liberman Bibi still hasn't won. Right now he doesn't seem to have either, although that could change.

Oh, I agree. Even in September the headlines were “Deadlock continues” as opposed to “Gantz wins”.

At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy nut, there is a tendency among mainstream media outlets to defer to the spin of more conservative voices generally, especially if they're the incumbent in a closely fought election. One potential reason for this (indeed, one reason such voices are in power in the first place) is the cohesion and calibration of said conservative voices' organizing institutions. Compared to opposition/non-reactionary voices, they are faster and more effective at aligning to a single, highyl self-serving, semi-plausible interpretation of events.

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B&W talking about amending the basic-law. political suicide, it will lead to a fourth election where Bibi will win a landslide, people hate sour losers.

What amendments are they proposing?

Unrelatedly, a strange point of comparison occurred to me this morning. This result is akin to the one a lot of pessimistic Labourites in the UK were hoping/expecting would happen last December: the right wing wins but too narrowly to break the deadlock, leading to at least the possibility of changes of leadership at the top of both parties.

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They’ve reached an agreement, apparently, maybe. We’ll see.

Where is that being reported?