Israel 2022 election (November 1st)

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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?

A party for people who aren't left wing in any way but voted Labor most of their lives out of tribalism, and/or an attempt to give patrician retired generals, sleazy populist grifters and other such centrist darlings some ideological legs to stand on, and/or a Lincoln Project-esque halfway house for people who are Likudniks but Not Like That.

If you remember the Labor Party as it used to be, then these are the sort of people who made up its right-wing. The genepool concept is very useful for understanding Israeli politics, to the extent it can be understood.

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Getting actual feelings of déjà vu now.

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So what exactly went wrong for the anti-Bibi camp?

Well, the government fell due to squabbles and this was then replicated with too many lists given where the threshold is set. There are also longer term arguments about a deficient political strategy and set of organizations, but that's the answer to a different question, really.

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Yet not a single poll predicted Meretz wouldn’t make it. I wonder if higher-than-expected turnout from right wingers pulled the threshold above Meretz.

It's routine to round figures upwards in polling so that doesn't actually mean a lot: by definition a party regularly polling four seats is always in danger of missing the threshold. It's unfortunate, but Meretz have been skating around the threshold for a while (hardly surprising as they had been below the present threshold once under the old, lower, threshold) and luck can't hold forever, probably. Even if they do make it back in the end this ought to lead to a fairly fundamental strategic re-think.

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A bit late to complain about it but that 3.25% threshold really is ridiculous. Not only is it a strange number but considering how fragmented Israeli politics are it's too high.

This true, but the consistent failure of the anti-Netanyahu parties to properly realize the implications is no one's fault but their own. One might hope that losing an election entirely because of that might change attitudes a little on that point, but on past form we should probably only believe it when we actually see it.

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Outside the settlements, RZ/OY's class & religion pattern actually seems reasonably comparable to that of European far-right parties, with all the caveats of comparing Israel to Europe of course.

That does suggest that Netanyahu might find it harder to put them back in their box now that they're too big for comfort, as he will surely try to do unless he's had a personality transplant.

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There is maybe a case for 2.5%, mostly eliminating total "joke" parties but enabling all non-negligible elements of the electorate to get some representation.

I think a better idea - especially given Israel's peculiar social geography - would be to have all MKs elected from multi-seat geographical constituencies. You have both a somewhat more stable (in theory...) Knesset and something close to guaranteed representation (without need for pacts or tactical voting ploys) for most non-negligible elements in the most Kaleidoscopic of societies. Would also encourage stronger party structures and make it possible for the odd independent to get in if there's a particular local issue here or there, neither of which would be bad things. Not that it'll happen.

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I think better system would be go to first past post or even better IVR like Australia does.  That tends to produce stable governments.  Although I will admit personal bias as generally FTFP popular in countries where done (its why most referendums to change system fail, NZ excepted) while where not in use, it seems few wish to switch to it.

A majoritarian electoral system in a county with a society as fractured as Israel's is just asking for trouble. The Indian experience suggests that, anyway, FPTP does not automatically produce stable parliamentary majorities and stable governments.

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One particular issue in Israel is the political need to keep the voting system accessible to illiterate voters (like in India, albeit for different reasons there). The only country I can think of offhand with substantial illiteracy and an electoral system where voters don't just pick one option is Papua New Guinea, and it doesn't seem like that works very well.

Yes, that's true. I think that would mean that closed constituency lists would be more appropriate than STV or open lists.

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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.

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Ah but have you considered how tactically brilliant it is too run too many lists in a PR system with thresholds?

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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.

This is not untrue, but it is important to note that the 'Bibi bloc' is also not very logically coherent and contains a lot of elements with blatantly contradictory policy preferences and political interests. It's held together by sheer force of personality, much as the anti-Bibi bloc is also - to a weaker extent as we've seen and to its cost - by that same force of personality, but in a negative sense.

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The first and most fundamental thing is that they ran too many lists. That is such a massive and basic error that it genuinely cannot be stressed enough. They also (and this is related) squabbled far too much amongst themselves and in general came across as a mass of feuding egomaniacs, which is not ideal when your opponent likes to play the 'only adult in the room' card.* And, obviously, also poor and lacklustre campaigns without much in the way of a positive vision. There are also longterm and structural issues regarding how the parties and factions on that side of the political divide are organized, present themselves, attempt to appeal to and so on, but the election was tight enough that it makes sense, at least for the moment, to look first and most at the proximate causes.

_{*And, yes, not a terribly natural grouping overall, but there are better ways of handling that... and things were no better amongst the parts that are more natural and obvious pairings...}

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

It is a little bit... how shall we say... 'what went wrong with my bread? Well, firstly, I forgot to turn the oven on...' isn't it?

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

Likud remains notable for a major party of the political right anywhere in that it has never been formally antisocialist: that Netanyahu is a recognizable type of right-wing politician of the sort that can be found in most Western (and highly developed non-Western for that matter) societies can easily obscure the fact that the party he leads is rather stranger and less typical.* Though perhaps not so rare in Eastern Europe: the 'Israel is best understood as a postcommunist society' thesis again.

_{*Of course as time goes by and as Netanyahu's personality continues to constantly warp the political system, this is more and more a piece of trivia as political parties become brands attached to and an extension of whoever currently leads them more than organizations.}

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Though it's worth noting that in 1992 Labour was a broad tent and more centrist, and the overall lump of center-left voters remains steady at over 80%, so in a sense, they are simply in line with Israeli society at large.

The fragmentation of the parties and constantly switching strategic voting patterns as politics moved from being unusually ideological to being driven by personality politics and vibes. Quite fascinating actually: thanks for posting this.