Israel General Elections || 23.03.2021

[Vosem]

What is Labor going to do now that they're polling at like 1%? Some sort of coalition with Gantz (as in, him giving Peretz and Shmuli places on his list)?

Not sure. I’ll doubt they’ll run alone considering how unpopular Peretz is. Shmuli might jump ship. They might run win Meretz (with a shotgun wedding) or with B&W if they run at all. Or they will run with the new Holdai party.

Is there really going to be a Huldai party? I feel like there's been speculation about this for the last two decades and it's never happened. Why would Huldai run now that he's 76 and probably wouldn't be a prime ministerial contender, which he could have been in the past?

[Vosem]

The obvious Bibi coalition is Likud+Haredim+RZ, all of which are obvious Bibi allies. Beyond that it gets very dicey; the obvious partner is Yamina, but most polls suggest that isn't a majority either and some other party needs to be brought over. New Hope and B&W both might (as might a breakaway from New Hope), but it doesn't look very good.

However...the alternative is a very broad anti-Bibi coalition that has no ideological coherence whatsoever apart from not being Bibi. Generally, if you exclude Likud, the Haredim, the Arabs, and RZ, you get a majority (and sometimes a comfortable one), but it's one that spans from Yamina to Meretz. It's kind of hard to envision such a government being formed. If it is, even if Lapid leads the largest party, Sa'ar is still a likelier PM because he would be able to keep the right-wing parties onside (Yamina and YB are not likely to want to join a government with Meretz), while the left or center-left parties have little alternative (to the point that I think Meretz has voiced being open to just supporting the government while remaining outside of it).

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What would a Kach (which is banned) majority in the Knesset be like?

What would a capital-L Libertarian majority in the US Congress be like?

Things would have to change so much for that to be on the table that it's a difficult question to answer. Maybe they've moderated in some way, but maybe the world has gone insane in ways that we can't fathom right now.

[Vosem]

Final countdown prediction:
Gantz is in
Meretz and Ra'am out.
Bibi has no government with Yamina
Lapid has no government for a YA coalition
All hell is going to break loose in the house as the non Bibi majority will try to get rid of Levine and pass  a change to the basic law

http://objectivevote.org.il/?page=platforms&lang=he
a decent whodoIsidewith

Filled it out for fun:

Blue and White +15
Yesh Atid +12
Yisrael Beiteinu +9
New Hope/Yamina +8
Labor/Meretz +5
Religious Zionist/Likud +4
New Economy +3
Joint List 0
Ra'am -2
Shas/UTJ -3

It seems like certain parties have less specific platforms (or less extreme ones), and it's not possible to get very high scores for those parties. My actual sympathies in this election are with Beiteinu.

[Vosem]

I was Labour and JL +13, Meretz  +9, YB+8.

Which is basically the four parties I’m on the fence with atm. Quite remarkable that Likud did not publish a platform since 2009.

YB seems very distinct from your other options, and the opinions you've expressed in your posting history. How come you are considering Lieberman?

(Also, in general, how do you plan to decide between those options?)

[Vosem]

So what will happen if both Ra'am and Meretz make it and the Likud+Shas+UTJ+Yamina+Religious Zionist does not cross 60 ? Who in the opposition will Netanyahu try to rope in this time "for the good of the country" ?

Probably various individual New Hope MKs, most of whom are former members of the Likud who have supported Bibi before? I'm not sure it'll work, though, since Bibi only needed to persuade one person to win back in April 2019*, and he still failed.

*And he literally did end up persuading Gadi Yevarkan to flip from Blue and White to Likud...after the second, September election. This whole crisis came very close to not happening at all!

[Vosem]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like this is in the bag for Bibi, really can't see Yamina supporting a YA-led government?

If Bibi or Yamina or one of the other parties does a tiny bit worse than they're doing now, there may just be no majority for anyone. (Unless Bibi can convince some renegade MK to flip, which is possible.) It does look like Bibi has an advantage over 2019/2019/2020 in that it's profoundly non-obvious who the alternative to him is. Sa'ar failed to establish himself as the leader of the opposite bloc.

[Vosem]

wait israel has another election today wtf lmao

If Channel 12's exit poll is correct, then Israel may well have just voted for "proceed to next try".

[Vosem]

So, when will the next election be?  Summer?  Fall?

No complete count of this one until Friday. It's possible Bibi has won by the very skin of his teeth, though (in which case perhaps up to 4 years, though 2-3 may be likelier given personality conflicts among the parties that all "support" him). On the other hand, if Bibi has not won, then probably late summer they do it all over again...

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it's not worth it at all for netanyahu to accept raam into his government. Court arab voters? Sure. Actually accept raam, lolno.

cheering for raam to hopefully stay above 3.25

You do know Ra'am prefers Bibi to YA/Sa'ar and is willing to go into government with him, right?

Ra'am has said it will NOT support a govt with the Kahanists, and vice versa, so that option is mathematically off the table. Doesn't matter.

The Ra'am option is impossible because the Kahanists literally want to strip citizenship of all Arab citizens. Abbas and Ben Gvir denounced each others intentions when Ra'am talked about supporting Likud. The Kahanists are key to Likuds hypothetical majority, so a different coalition would need to be discovered in order for the Ra'am option to work.

Does this mean just the literal Kahanists, or RZ as a whole? In terms of literal Kahanists, Ben-Gvir is #3 on the RZ list, but after him the others from his party are in various unwinnable slots, and I'm sure Bibi would be willing to cut off Ben-Gvir to let Ra'am support him.

If it means RZ as a whole, then that might be a much tougher ask.

[Vosem]

Would that even be enough to change what's going on? Bibi could always offer some obvious stand-in for himself as a candidate for Prime Minister. (Or just keep running and promise to change the law to re-qualify himself if he wins, since arguably the point of the whole 2019-present political crisis is the immunity law, which Bibi wouldn't want if he weren't Prime Minister.)

The formation of New Hope seemed to offer a, well, new hope to end the crisis by convincing pro-Bibi voters over to the anti-Bibi side, but its total flameout suggests that was never going to happen. If persuasion over the course of repeated elections doesn't work, then the crisis keeps going until Likud chooses, voluntarily, to get rid of Bibi and come up with a different candidate who can convince the Yisrael Beiteinu and New Hope people to rejoin their coalition. That's probably not possible unless/until Bibi actually goes to jail.

(Kind of looking forward to Gantz taking over in November at this point.)

[Vosem]

Meretz got an extra seat over Ra'am. I'm not sure I'm correct but Ra'am might've got one if they signed a vote sharing agreement with the Joint List.

Hebrew Wikipedia suggests that they did not, and there were only six vote-surplus agreements:
- New Hope and Yamina
- Yesh Atid and Yisrael Beiteinu
- Blue and White and New Economics (Zelecha); I believe they don't count if a party doesn't hit the threshold
- Likud and Religious Zionist Party
- Labor and Meretz
- Shas and United Torah Judaism

Really leaving money on the table there.

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Result by party for each of the four elections, and average. Ultimately deciding what counts as a "separate party" and what doesn't is very difficult; my initial rule was disaffiliating where the parties have sometimes run separately, but as a kludge I included Ta'al as a separate party (rather than aggregating with Hadash), aggregated Telem as part of Blue and White (because no one was voting for Ya'alon, really), and just considered Gesher to be Orly Levy switching sides a bunch of times rather than something real. Here are the results:

Likud (Netanyahu): 35/33/36/30 (average 33.5)
Blue and White (Gantz): 20/20/20/8 (average 17)
Yesh Atid (Lapid): 15/13/13/17 (average 14.5)
Shas (Deri): 8/9/9/9 (average 8.75)
United Torah Judaism (Litzman/Gafni): 8/7/7/7 (average 7.25)
Yisrael Beiteinu (Liberman): 5/8/7/7 (average 6.75)
Labor (Gabbai/A. Peretz/Michaeli): 6/6/4/7 (average 5.75)
Meretz (Zandberg/Horowitz): 4/5/3/6 (average 4.5)
URWP/RZP (R. Peretz/Smotrich): 5/4/3/6 (average 4.5)
Hadash (Odeh): 4/5/5/3 (average 4.25)
New Right/Yamina (Bennett): 0/3/3/7 (average 3.25)
Ra'am (Abbas): 2/3/4/4 (average 3.25)
Balad (Shehadeh/Abu-Shehadeh): 2/3/3/1 (average 2.25)
Ta'al (Tibi): 2/2/3/2 (average 2.25)
New Hope (Sa'ar): -/-/-/6 (average 1.5)
Kulanu (Kachlon): 4/-/-/- (average 1)

Many of these numbers are very constant, but a surprising number are really not; over the course of 4 elections there actually has been a great deal of churn. It's just that none of the results have been conducive to anything actually getting done.

[Vosem]

Bibi isn’t trying to form a government. It’s a sham, he doesn’t want to be in the mercy of Bennett. He’s trying to make Ra’am up their demands so high so no one else could agree to give them what they want.

As I predicted two years ago, the presidential election is where the focus will be now. The fifth cycle is looking grim to him atm, he’ll try going in with more mustard.

According to Akiva Novik, there might be a loophole in the law that allows the Speaker to get all of the President's roles and responsibilities if he doesn't hold an election before the final possible date. This could really get explosive if Levin tries that. What do you think?

Doesn't the new Knesset get to elect a new Speaker? The 2020 Knesset elected Gantz at the start of the term, for instance. The coalition that elected Gantz as Speaker a year ago still has a majority...

[Vosem]

By built into the constitution, do you mean that Bennett and Lapid are recycling the Netanyahu/Gantz agreement of 2020? Will one of them get to be 'Alternate Prime Minister' with veto power over everything? Is their agreement only for 3 years, with 18-month terms for both, rather than 4 years and 2-year terms?

[Vosem]

It appears that there are 61 votes for forcing a Speakership vote this week and then having the new Speaker swear in the government faster; the coalition will be nominating Mickey Levy of Yesh Atid to replace Yariv Levin. Moment of truth here for Nir Orbach, I guess.

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61 votes exactly? I suspect the saga will continue.

60. Orbach withdrew his vote. Bennett and his incompetence

LOL first crisis of the government and it's not even in power yet

Orbach seems like a...really indecisive guy, yeah? He clearly supports the coalition on some level if he signed on to replacing Levin in the first place, but then he backed off to prove a point to his within-party supporters or something.