Israeli local elections, 2013

[danny]

If it's Henin than I expect him to lose the same as last time, Leef would probably end up a joke, Horowitz might make it interesting. A credible challenger should make it interesting, since I don't think Huldai is popular.

As for Jerusalem it will be incumbent Barkat versus whomever the Haredi put up against him this time.

[danny]

Since the OP doesn't mention it, the election will take place 22/10/13 and will be for (almost) all municipalities in the country. The voting is for both the head of the municipality and for the party on the local list in a proportional manner, similar to the way the Knesset elections are.

[danny]

Also, where can I find results from previous mayoral elections? It doesn't look like there are any sites in English. Maybe if I can at least find one in Hebrew I can run it through Google translate.

Best I could find (will open pdf or word):

Results for mayor with winner only including second round
results for mayor including losers but no second round
Results for council

[danny]

What party will Yahav run for this time?

Parties are not important in local elections, and are usually just local creations with maybe a vague connection to national politics. Parties will often be called "our city x" or "city x forward" etc..

[danny]

Also, where can I find results from previous mayoral elections? It doesn't look like there are any sites in English. Maybe if I can at least find one in Hebrew I can run it through Google translate.

Best I could find (will open pdf or word):

Results for mayor with winner only including second round
results for mayor including losers but no second round
Results for council

Thanks. The first two worked great.

Unfortunately the city council one seems to only list the lists' numbers? Not their actual names. Bummer.

The big column in the middle is the party name and the leftmost one is the individual member name.

[danny]

Now Kachite former MK Michael Ben-Ari is trying to recruit a right-wing candidate for Tel Aviv mayor on Facebook.

I wonder if he might run himself. Not like he's got anything more important to do.

Well, he was born in Tel Aviv...

[danny]

It's official, Meretz MK Nitzan Horowitz will be trying to unseat Tel Aviv's reigning mayor Ron Huldai , I am going to wager on a Horowitz victory.

A Meretz mayor in the second-largest city in the country would be awesome!

Meretz got its highest results since 1992 in the January election in Tel Aviv (14% of the vote and circa 35K voters). Tel Aviv is ripe for the taking and pushing Labour aside there.
And if he wins we may see a sequence with Tel Aviv, herzliya, and Ramat Hasharon all having a Meretz mayor

Giggidy giggidy giggidy

Why are you so happy about Israeli local elections?

[danny]

It's official, Meretz MK Nitzan Horowitz will be trying to unseat Tel Aviv's reigning mayor Ron Huldai , I am going to wager on a Horowitz victory.

A Meretz mayor in the second-largest city in the country would be awesome!

Meretz got its highest results since 1992 in the January election in Tel Aviv (14% of the vote and circa 35K voters). Tel Aviv is ripe for the taking and pushing Labour aside there.
And if he wins we may see a sequence with Tel Aviv, herzliya, and Ramat Hasharon all having a Meretz mayor

Giggidy giggidy giggidy

Why are you so happy about Israeli local elections?

Because this is the Atlas Forum.

Heh, yeah, good answer. But it's just that local elections have very little relation to national elections. The issues and parties are different, the big issue in national politics isn't relevant, And results don't seem to show much connection between the two.

[danny]

and Zeev Bielski from Kadima will run for mayor in Ra'anana.

[danny]

Currently, the two main candidates for Jerusalem are the incumbent mayor Nir Barkat, who heads a local list, and Likud-Yisrael Beytenu candidate Moshe Leon.

Hey, can any Israelis tell me why Likud is backing someone other than Barkat? He backed them in the last election so I was expecting the favor to be returned.

Bibi basically does support Barkat, it's the local Likud party who haven't been happy with Barkat for a while and Lieberman who is a good friend of Leon's, who are supporting Leon.

[danny]

Just came back from voting for Barkat.

Jerusalem is clearly getting the most attention, mostly because of the heavy involvement from national politicians.

[danny]

polls are closed for an hour and a half but there aren't enough votes counted yet to know where things are going.

[danny]

Barkat wins in Jerusalem.
Huldai in Tel Aviv.

It seems that Zuabi easily lost in Nazareth.

[danny]

Yeah, all the changes happened in smaller cities. Incumbents won in the big cities.

[danny]

Danny, know anything about the Herzliya race?

Hertzeliya was ruled until the last election by Meretz's Yael German, whom left the party to join Lapid and became an MK and minister of health. Replacing her temporarily as mayor was Yehonatan Yasur, also from Meretz. Yehonatan was considered favourite to win the election, but ended up with a disappointing third place. there will be a run-off between the top two Moshe Fadlon with 24.89% and Tzvika Hadar with 24.44%.

[danny]

Haneen Zuabis run in Nazareth ended up an epic fail. The race is currently incredibly close with only 21 votes between the top 2 both with 43.2%, but Zuabi only got 10.4%...

[danny]

Other than Barkat's win, the party I voted for, Hitorerut (Awakening) went from 1 seat to 4 in the city council.

[danny]

Other than Barkat's win, the party I voted for, Hitorerut (Awakening) went from 1 seat to 4 in the city council.

Should have guessed you are on of them .
In Jerusalem it's interesting to note the split in the Ashkenaz Haredi camp and the "free choice" option given to Hassidic voter in the mayoral elections for the first time well... ever.

The Gurs did the same thing last time as well.

[danny]

As far as I know, only in Hebrew:

Mayor election
Council election

[danny]

The results in my home town of Haifa are cancelled right now. 5K votes went AWOL over night!

Last night there were 87K votes and today after 5K of absentee votes (soldiers and such) were added there were only 86K votes on the registry.

A recount will be conducted in the morning to trace the error or determine if felony was a part in this

Time for the "only in Israel" and "third world country" headlines.

[danny]

Haneen Zuabis run in Nazareth ended up an epic fail. The race is currently incredibly close with only 21 votes between the top 2 both with 43.2%, but Zuabi only got 10.4%...

Who is the other candidate besides Zuabi and the incumbent? Will there be a run-off?

Run-offs are only if no candidate reaches 40%, so there will not be a run-off and someone will have to win this. The other candidate is Ali Salam, with his own new party.

[danny]

Looks like Ali Salam won Nazareth.

With a name like that, he must be Muslim, right?

So the Christians and Hadash have lost control of Nazareth for the first time since the 70s.

Albeit to a former Hadash member.

I don't know but Nazareth is 70% Muslim so this was bound to happen eventually.

[danny]

Who's the guy who came in third in Tel Aviv?

Aaron Meduel representing 'city for us all' a party getting left activists (mainly Hadash) and poor south TLV residents together. They ran MK Dov Khanin from the communists in 2008 but they crashed this time around losing 2 council seats (now they hold 3)

If I remember correctly from the election maps for the previous election, City for all support was more from left wingers and less from the south.

[danny]

Has a winner even been declared in Nazareth yet? Yesterday on English Haaretz there was an article about a "power sharing deal" because it was so close but the link didn't go anywhere.

Ali Salam was declared the winner.

[danny]

Bumping this because there are two revotes today. One in Beit Shemesh, and the other in Nazareth.