Israeli election and demographic maps

[danny]

All the maps in this thread are in the gallery.

Map of central Israel plurality vote winner in 2009 by municipality




Note that about 3.4 million (42% of Israel population) people live in the area.

Edit: changed the original centre map to fit in with the other maps so that every part of the country is covered

[danny]

Fantastic, Is there anyway to add municipal names? It would be great to see who won over where... It looks like Kadima won over Tel-Aviv but thats the only local i can pin-point... i'm interested in that strong left area in the north (two green Meretz and 1 Labour).
Also, does this show the Kibbutz's?

Yes, it includes kibbutzim and moshavim.
The two Meretz places are Ga'ash (southern one) and Yakum(north), and the Labour one is Shefayim. All of those are kibbutzim.

[danny]

Am i right that Kadima also won Jerusalem? that just seems odd to me, as i thought Likud would out perfom there?

Not even close, Likud won, while Kadima came in fourth behind UTJ and Shas with less than half of Likuds vote.
In fact, they came in fourth in the 2006 election ( behind UTJ Shas and NU-NRP) as well even though they easily won the national vote.

[danny]

I edited the map to include the names of all the cities with a population above 50,000:

Big cities:
Tel Aviv (404,300)
Rishon Letzion (231,000)
Petah Tikva (211,100)

[danny]

Where do you get this data from?? I'd love to see some results from Judea and Samaria

The data comes from the Knesset website but it's only in Hebrew.
I can get the results from the settlements, unfortunately they don't seem to have defined borders so I can't do it in map form.
But if you want the results from any specific place then tell me.

[danny]

If you could link?

Here (doesn't work on firefox).

[danny]

NOW that makes sense... Jerusalem just sticks in my craw as being this bastian of the religious/right... My bad i was looking at that blob thats actually Modi'in-Maccabim-Re'ut (i had to look it up)

It very much is a bastion of the right It was about 75%-25% for the right-religious against everyone else.

I'm with Teddy, if you have the other districts that would be awesome (Northern, Southern, Haifa and Jerusalem).... you updated it, YOU ROCK

I plan on doing the rest of the country eventually but I can't promise anything about when.

So Ashdod i am guessing has a high Russian populartion to explain why Yisrael Beitenu took it?

Yes, huge, the biggest in Israel.

How is Labour perfoming under Shelly Yachimovich?

Better than with Barak beating Kadima to second but not a threat Likud right now.

[danny]

baby steps labour
I hope Meretz manages to get its act together too... seems like the Left took a massive blow in 2009... I don't consider kadima left so

Can you exlpain the difference between all those religious parties? (Shas, UTJ, National Union, Jewish Home)?

Israel is generally held up as a mess of an example of why PR list with a low threshold can get... complicated (being nice)

UTJ is union of two parties:
The Lithuanian Haredi Degel Hatorah which is the party for non-hasidic, ashkenazi, ultra orthodox Jews.
Agudat Israel is the hasidic party (who are also overwhelmingly ashkenazi).
combined UTJ acts as a party for all Ultra orthodox ashkenazi jews (except for chabad).

Shas is the party of Sephardi ultra orthodox, however most of its vote comes from non-ultra orthodox sephardim.

National Union is a union of 4 parties, which range in religion from secular to a kind of mixture of ultra orthodoxy and the more religiously moderate "religious Zionism"  called "hardal". the common denominator for this group is extreme hawkish views.

Jewish Home is the descendant of the National Religious party, the formerly general party for the religious Zionism it wasn't originally a right wing party at all but drifted right over time as religious people in general have. It's basically a more pragmatic version of the NU.

[danny]

Well, yes. The first step must be rebuilding...

Anyways, great maps. Do you have anything showing results inside Tel Aviv?

Here is a link] to a PDF document in Hebrew, if you scroll to the bottom there are maps:

Kadima is purple.
Likud is blue.
Labour is orange.
Meretz is green.
Shas is light blue.
Israel Beitenu is red.
Others is yellow.

[danny]

Croeso

[danny]

Interesting North/South divide there eh...
North end (minus the coast) is where Labour i strongest, i'm guessing working class. Kadima also looks to dominate here especially on the coast

The central wards (3-6) is where Meretz is strongest (5&6 look to be equal to Labour) thats not surprising; probably artsy, secular, mixed; very Copenhagen looking

South is all Likud, probably wealthy... but in ward 7, Yellow has strength, would that be an arab or religious party?

I would assume Israeli-arabs would vote for Hadash or Balad... then Labour, Meretz, Kadima. The arab parties then the more dovish ones?

You have it mixed up, in Israel, as a general rule, amongst Jews, rich people vote for the left(now also including Kadima) while the poor vote for the right.

The central wards are indeed secular and artsy (and gay) but I wouldn't call it mixed, in Israeli ethno-religious sense its quite homogenic (young secular Ashkenazi).

The North is the super wealthy part (and thus a high vote for Kadima and Labour).

The south is the poor (and more sephardi) area.

The area with a lot of yellow includes Jaffa, the Arab part who vote for the Arab parties.

[danny]

Huhh thats rather interesting... my guess is wealth=education=knowledge of the issues... therefore they are more likely to vote for parties who are less reactionist. Thats my leftwing analogy.

Like you mentioned above the religious groups seem to vote along different paterns, do the Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, Beta ... (missing any?) vote along those paterns?

Secular ashkenazis, the historic "elites" and founders, are the base of the left.
Sephardi/Mizrahi vote for the right (Likud and Shas).
Beta (Ethiopians) are a new immigrant and very poor group and also vote mostly for the right.
There are also the immigrants that came from the USSR after its collapse who nowadays also vote for the right (Yisrael Beitenu and Likud)

The long term problem of the left is that its base has a slower population growth than the country as a whole.

[danny]

Map of Kadima strength:

[danny]

And Likud:

[danny]

Haifa district:
population 913,000

Big cities:
Haifa (268,200)
Hadera (81,500)
Kiryat Atta (51,500)

[danny]

Thanks, but, can I request something with fewer jews I'm much more curious how places full of Arabs vote!

They generally vote like the southeast part of the Haifa district, except for the south where everyone votes UAL.

[danny]

Oh yeah, there seems to be a fairly solid Arab-majority part there. Possibly even some of the Jewish-colored nearby municipalities thanks to vote splitting?

No, There are no Jewish minority towns in Israel, all cities and villages in Israel either have a Jewish majority (usually with no Arabs and a few with an Arab minority) or a basically non-existent one. What that area has is something that isn't uncommon at all in Israel, which is a 99+% Arab town adjacent to a 99+% Jewish one.

[danny]

Oh yeah, there seems to be a fairly solid Arab-majority part there. Possibly even some of the Jewish-colored nearby municipalities thanks to vote splitting?

No, There are no Jewish minority towns in Israel, all cities and villages in Israel either have a Jewish majority (usually with no Arabs and a few with an Arab minority) or a basically non-existent one. What that area has is something that isn't uncommon at all in Israel, which is a 99+% Arab town adjacent to a 99+% Jewish one.

Yeah. That sounds logical. It was just the appearance of all three Arab parties next to each other that made me wonder.
So is that a random occurrence or is it normal for Arab towns to vote en bloc for one of the three?

Those towns didn't vote en bloc they just had a different percent voting for each of the three, for example:

Umm al-Fahm: Hadash-55%, Balad-24%, UAL-19%
Ar'ara: Balad-44%, UAL-32%, Hadash-21%
Baqa-Jatt: UAL-48%, Balad-39%, Hadash-5%

[danny]

Oh yeah, there seems to be a fairly solid Arab-majority part there. Possibly even some of the Jewish-colored nearby municipalities thanks to vote splitting?

No, There are no Jewish minority towns in Israel, all cities and villages in Israel either have a Jewish majority (usually with no Arabs and a few with an Arab minority) or a basically non-existent one. What that area has is something that isn't uncommon at all in Israel, which is a 99+% Arab town adjacent to a 99+% Jewish one.

There is a part of the north that's very Arab and Non-Jewish... where is my map.

Yes, the north district is 53% Arab, unfortunately, it also has a million little towns and villages
(total population of 1.3 million but the largest city is only 70 thousand) which means it will be the hardest one to do, so it won't be done anytime soon.

[danny]

Those towns didn't vote en bloc they just had a different percent voting for each of the three, for example:

Umm al-Fahm: Hadash-55%, Balad-24%, UAL-19%
Baqa-Jatt: UAL-48%, Balad-39%, Hadash-5%

Not exactly blockvoting, no. But a pretty damn striking difference nonetheless.

Different, yes, but pretty mild compared some other places in Israel with real bloc voting:

Ar'ara-in-the-negev (southern Bedouin): UAL-95% (2534 votes out of 2664 total)
Yitzhar (far right settlement): National Union-87%
Beit Hilkia (ultra Orthodox Moshav): UTJ-84%

[danny]

Jerusalem district
population 945,000

big cities:
Jerusalem (788,100)
Beit Shemesh (80,600)
Mevaseret Zion (24,000)

[danny]

Thanks, but, can I request something with fewer jews I'm much more curious how places full of Arabs vote!

Took a bit of time but here is the North district:

Population: 1,242,100

Religion:

Jews: 44.2%
Muslims: 37.7%
Druze: 8%
Christian:7.3%
Other: 2.8%


I labeled everything over 15k population

[danny]

Beautiful.

Where do the Druze live and how do they vote?

They live mostly around an area where I labeled Yarka.

Their vote is all over the place, there are majority Druze localities that voted for each of Kadima, Likud, Shas and Labour.

[danny]

Shas?

Now that was unexpected.

Yeah, that surprised me as well.

Actually amongst Arabs (non-Druze ) there seems to be a close fight between Shas and Labour for the biggest Jewish party. And no, I have no idea why Shas would appeal to Arabs (Labour is understandable).

[danny]

Your map Teddy, shows one of the problems for the Zionist left-centre, you can see how they couldn't win a single city.

Oh, and Yisrael Hazaka was actually a left wing party founded by a former Labourite that supported the separation of state and church.