Israel 2022 election (November 1st)

[Antonio the Sixth]

The Bibi bloc has 61 organic seats for the first time in a poll but that’s because both Yamina and Meretz with 2.6% and 2.1% respectively are below the threshold.

The responsible thing to do is for everyone to cannibalise Yamina and pressure Meretz not to run

What would Yamina's electorate be this time around anyway? I mean, it's really hard to see a niche for very right-wing Israeli voters who nonetheless would support allying with the left to keep Bibi out of power.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Why does Israel have such ridiculously long election campaigns? Most countries have campaign periods of five or six weeks and if an early election is forced due to a non confidence vote, it’s usually held no more than two months later. Only Israel seems to think it takes like six months to hold an early election.

Considering America has been in a permanent election campaign from basically 2015 to the present with no break, a six month campaign sounds positively ideal.

Well, it would be if 6 months wasn't also the average length of time from one election to the next (I'm exaggerating but just barely).

[Antonio the Sixth]

Sorry I've been out of the loop for a while (there's only so many depressing elections I can focus on at any given time) but what the f**k is the Statist Party?

[Antonio the Sixth]

I see, thanks for filling me in. I guess I should have guessed it since I should have known Gantz and Saar were still limping around somewhere.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Considering Bibi's age (he is 73), has he made any statements about serving a full term if he becomes PM again?

Berlusconi says hi

[Antonio the Sixth]

Well, here we go. Can someone link to the results page?

Also when will we know the final turnout number?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Also when will we know the final turnout number?

Any idea on that? That seems like a big deal given the nature of the unknowns here.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Do we seriously still not have even the turnout figure?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Do we seriously still not have even the turnout figure?

71.3%.

Makes me feel even better about Balad's chances of getting in.

Ah, thanks. So we're pretty much back at 2015 and 2020 levels, both years where Arab turnout was strong. Of course that's no guarantee, but inshallah.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Can someone more well-versed in Israeli election maps than myself try to compare the votes we're getting so far to those for the same locations last election and see if we can make anything of this? I was able to do it for Brazil and got pretty close, but Israel is just too much for me.

[Antonio the Sixth]

What about the Balad strongholds then? Are they over- or underreporting so far?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Well I was really hoping I'd be able to go to bed (at 5:30am!) with a sense of where things are headed, but I guess not. Have fun I guess. Here's hoping I'll wake up to more of the same shambolic status quo rather than to Bibi's Grand Comeback.

[Antonio the Sixth]

F**king hell

[Antonio the Sixth]

The problem isn't the exact percentage of the threshold (of course a lower threshold will create less distortion while a higher threshold will encourage stronger parties, but that tradeoff exists everywhere and usually isn't as problematic as here). The problem is that Israeli politics are now clearly structured in terms of blocks, and the thresholds lead to effectively giving artificial bonuses or maluses to this or that block based on completely arbitrary factors like how the musical chairs of alliances among Arab parties or among the religious Zionist right worked out this time around. That has worked in Bibi's disfavor previously and it worked in his favor this time.

The point is that there needs to be a system that actually recognizes broad coalitions of parties as the primary unit for the distribution of seats. If a party doesn't make the threshold, fine. I think it's reasonable to not want a bunch of microparties represented. But there should be a way to ensure that those votes are redistributed to other parties with a similar constituency rather than being just wasted. This could be done pretty simply actually: Israel already uses vote-pooling agreements to allow parties to gain more seats - it wouldn't be hard at all to extend the system so parties that don't make the threshold can still choose to lend their votes to some other party.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Assuming there are 600k total votes left (Israeli posters tell me if that's the right estimate?) and that the share of invalid votes among those is the same as in what's already counted, Meretz would need to win around 3.85% of what's left in order to pass the threshold. How likely would that be?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Assuming there are 600k total votes left (Israeli posters tell me if that's the right estimate?) and that the share of invalid votes among those is the same as in what's already counted, Meretz would need to win around 3.85% of what's left in order to pass the threshold. How likely would that be?

Well, 100k votes have been counted and Meretz' vote share has gone down, not up. Unless we expect the final 500k to be different, it's probably over.

[Antonio the Sixth]

What a depressing result, those five elections were a complete waste of time. The anti-Bibi parties blew so many opportunities, they need to take a long and hard look at themselves.

Yeah. The sheer number of unforced errors in this election (and in the previous ones that got us here) is truly something to behold. It's just been a long game of Russian roulette. They avoided the bullet a couple times but if they just kept playing it was going to come up eventually.

[Antonio the Sixth]

What a depressing result, those five elections were a complete waste of time. The anti-Bibi parties blew so many opportunities, they need to take a long and hard look at themselves.

Yeah. The sheer number of unforced errors in this election (and in the previous ones that got us here) is truly something to behold. It's just been a long game of Russian roulette. They avoided the bullet a couple times but if they just kept playing it was going to come up eventually.

I would say that it's a bit like Italy during the Berlusconi era in a Second Time As Farce sense, but the original version was pretty farcical itself.

Well, the Italian left blew two chances to form an anti-Berlusconi government (once in 2006-2008 and once in 2011-2013). The anti-Bibi parties blew four, so that's a whole other level.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Are we sure those are the final results? Based on the turnout figure there should be 4840k total votes.

Anyway, if these are the final results, I guess the Bibi block won 48.36% and anti-Bibi got 48.92%. That should have resulted in a 60-60 deadlock (and thus a guarantee of a new election), but oh well.

[Antonio the Sixth]

If you are adding up parties below the threshold than you should add Jewish Home which declared itself part of the Bibi bloc, and would put it slightly ahead. But the general idea is correct, the two sides got an almost equal number of votes.

Oh, I didn't realize that. I assumed JH was out of both blocks given its recent experience.

I guess that makes me feel marginally better about the unfairness of this outcome, though the bottom line is still dreadful.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Is it really meaningful to speak of an anti-Bibi “bloc” that includes Lieberman and Gideon Sa’ar on the one end and Hadash and Balad on the other? Sure, they’re all anti-Bibi but they don’t represent any coherent alternative government.

I mean, all of those have in fact been working together in the past year to keep the previous government alive, so they're clearly capable to do so. It's JH that pulled the plug.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Well, a lot of things went wrong, but it didn't help they just kinda forgot about the electoral threshold thing.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Huge contrast although not surprising.  Seems like Jerusalem had close to 75% go for Bibi bloc and quite right wing while Tel Aviv Bibi bloc got only around 25% roughly so very much a mix of centrist and left wing.  But no surprise.  Having been to both cities, Jerusalem struck me as a very religious city while Tel Aviv quite secular.

Truly the earth-shattering insight we were all craving for.

You'd be shocked how many people don't know this, even though it's such a basic and elegant fact that you can make a successful educated guess at it based purely on generalized stereotypes without even needing to know anything about contemporary Israeli society.

Reject Modernity (Tel Aviv)
Embrace Tradition (Jerusalem)

Reject Modernity (Likud)
Embrace Tradition (Mapai)

Yeah, Israel's actual roots are secular and socialist, no matter how inconvenient this fact might be to the people who run things now.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Say what you will about Israel's vote-counting, but at least they've posted final, certified results within a week of the election, Unlike Some.

So, since my autism gives me a deep-seated aversion for analyzing election data that isn't final and I needed something to bite off, here's an updated chart of Israeli elections since 1992.



Really not much shift overall. The uptick in the centrist vote is an artifact of the fact that Gantz and Saar are together now and I chose to put them on that side rather than on the right (feels weird to still put YB on the right as well, but it would feel even weirder to move it over to the center-left side). The "core" right-wing vote (as in, Likud and everything to its right) has increased, though, almost equaling its high point in 2020. The religious parties are also stronger than they've been since 2013, so this election saw a genuine growth of the pro-Bibi block all around. Was it due to persuasion or turnout (or even demographic replacement)? I'm curious to hear Israeli posters' takes on that. Arab turnout also did quite well, coming close to its 2015 level (though still well below its 2020 high point). The left vote crashed and burned even more than it previously had, but if you include YA into the mix the picture gets a lot better, so it seems like what just happened is that a bunch of Labor/Meretz types jumped ship.

All in all, of course, the Israeli electorate is remarkably stable, as befit a society that seems both polarized and pillarized (in ways that don't even fully overlap!). No idea what it's going to take to actually break the standstill, but I guess we'll see how Israelis will feel after 4 years of Bibi...