Carrie Keller-Lynn is a politician and correspondent for The Times of Israel
Israelis head to polling stations across the country on Tuesday to elect the 25th Knesset. The country’s fifth vote in less than 4 years comes as opinion polls expect an incredibly close race between the two blocs in parliament, with a choice other than a new stalemate and no bloc securing a majority of 61 lawmakers in the 120-seat parliament to form a government.
The main candidates in the crusade to form a government are Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with his Likud party and devoted right-wing allies, and current interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid, with his centrist Yesh Atid party and a diverse team of supporting parties, united largely in opposition to Netanyahu. Another hope is Defense Minister Benny Gantz, leader of the National Unity Party, who went on a crusade as a compromise candidate who could simply cross blocks to find the elusive majority.
Netanyahu’s bloc won the most productive polls, in the 50s and up to 61 seats in the network’s main polls. Lapid’s bloc never topped 56 seats in those polls, and could not know how it would form a government if the polls turned out. to be true. Conversely, if those dodgy investigations are accurate, Lapid’s most productive hope would likely be to save you, Netanyahu, or some other candidate, from forming a viable coalition.
Gantz has tried to position himself as an option for Netanyahu and Lapid, who are drawing strong opposition from their political rivals. However, the anti-blockade coalition constellation he proposes includes parties with bitter enmities, and it is unclear how he himself might succeed. in the magic number.
That said, there are a number of points at play that can simply adjust the Knesset map predicted by pollsters and experts. Even a small replacement can shake up the impasse and pave the way for one of the contenders for power.
There are 3 Arab lists competing in the existing elections, and their fate may simply seal the fate of the Lapid-led bloc. Since Arab participation is expected to be lower than in previous rounds, the Arab vote can be a very important issue.
The Islamist Ra’am party, a member of the outgoing coalition, would do so with a Lapid or Gantz government, while the Hadash-Taal alliance has traditionally formed a third bloc of non-aligned seats that are not available to either bloc. threshold, and without meaningful participation, it can collapse.
The Palestinian nationalist Balad party is expected to cross the minimum threshold of 3. 25% of the vote independently, voting at 1. 6% in the latest Channel Twelfth pre-election poll.
Hadash-Taal, in particular, is nervous about her chances, making a rare weekend call to the Jewish electorate to vote “strategically” for the party and wins at least 4 seats on Tuesday.
About 17 of Israel’s estimated eligible electorate of 6. 8 million are Arabs, according to the knowledge of the Central Bureau of Statistics and the Central Election Commission. Historically, Israel’s Arab network, which aggregates Muslims, Christians and Druze, has had lower turnout rates than the Jewish electorate.
In the last election, Arab turnout fell to an all-time low of just 44%, 72% among the Jewish electorate and 67% overall. Low turnout led to minimal representation of Arab parties in the Knesset. In 2020, when the 4 Arab parties ran together on the Joint List, Arab representation reached a record 15 seats. In 2021, after Ra’am withdrew from the joint list, only 10 collective seats were won between them.
Now that the Joint List has been split into Hadash-Ta’al and Balad, with Ra’am proceeding to conduct a separate campaign, Arab participation has reached 37% and 48% in recent weeks.
If Hadash-Taal and Raam fail to return to the Knesset, the Likud-led bloc will gain proportional advantages and pave the way for power. If any fails, Netanyahu’s clients would be even better.
With either in the Knesset, an opportunity would open up for Lapid to spare him the formation of a government. The Likud says it may even seek a coalition that includes or is based in Hadash-Ta’al. Both Lapid and Hadash-Ta’al refuted this as a forward-looking scenario.
In the final days of the campaign, some analysts warned that Arab turnout could turn out to be higher than polls suggest, and even Balad could reach the Knesset’s 3. 25 percent threshold. Previous elections have indicated that pollsters have struggled to predict the Arab vote. .
Renewed fears about haredi voter turnout have emerged in recent weeks, as the electorate allied with the Ashkenazi Haredi party, Yahadut HaTorah, has become frustrated with the party’s management after a year in opposition.
UTJ lately has seven seats and has voted to return to that number. A low turnout or loss of votes to some other right-wing party can reduce that number to six, a situation that has caused much panic in haredi politics. Circles. However, only if the seat leaves the block, will it have effects on the rapid impasse.
The Haredi electorate makes up 11 percent of the electorate, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, with most of its votes going to the UTJ and the Mizrahi Haredi Shas party. In the last elections, Haredi turnout reached 80%.
However, public broadcaster Kan reported that as of mid-October, Haredi’s stake is expected to fall by 12%.
According to polls, the popularity of Otzma Yehudit leader Itamar Ben Gvir, especially among younger or more nationalist haredi voters, has also attracted votes from the party.
According to Kan, about 6% of haredi votes can be diverted towards devout Zionism: Otzma Yehudit. Matches despite everything he did. Losing places.
The former ruling Yamina party won seven seats under Naftali Bennett in 2021, propelling him to the post of prime minister, but he was not even admitted to the polls in November. The dissolution of the party created political refugees.
Nearly a third of Yamina’s electorate in March 2021 identifies as national clerics and is part of the moderate and dominant edition of the varied devout national spectrum. He also drew part of his base from a secular right-wing and classical electorate.
By contrast, 61% of the electorate of the Religious Zionism Party in 2021 were national clerics, and the party is considered to represent the right of this spectrum.
Yamina’s legacy is now best represented through Jewish House and its leader, Bennett’s former MP Ayelet Shaked. But the party has struggled in the polls and only got 1. 5% to 2% in the most recent primary network polls this weekend.
While many former voters of Yamina have migrated to devout Zionism or some other right-wing or centrist party, some still vote for Shaked.
Shaked says Netanyahu wants her to supplement his government’s numbers; Netanyahu’s camp claims she is jeopardizing the whole business by burning right-wing votes when she leaves the Knesset.
If the electorate feels that hope has been lost and abandons it, they may waste the number of votes on the right and push Netanyahu to a surprising distance from the majority. give Netanyahu extra seats, or keep them for him, in case she takes them out of the Likud in the first place.
The poor functionality of two other parties in Lapid’s bloc may tilt the election in Netanyahu’s direction. Leftist Meretz and center-left Labour are teetering near the threshold. Without much movement among the blocs, much of Yesh Atid’s slow rise in the polls during the months of the crusade came under the accusation of cannibalizing his leftist partners. Meretz and Labor have engaged in frantic last-minute efforts to convince the electorate to vote for them, rather than expanding the number of seats Lapid’s Yesh Atid hopes to receive.
If Labor or Meretz leaves the Knesset, polls expect a practical victory for Netanyahu.
Labour leader Merav Michaeli summarily rejected Lapid’s efforts to unite her party and Meretz ahead of the September deadline for the list of candidates, who would rather keep Labor as an independent organisation than what she saw as a lifeline for Meretz.
Will this come back to hang out with her?
Perhaps the most mundane factor, the expected bad weather, may undermine the will of an unmotivated electorate to go to the polls. So much so that experts hope this could reduce participation in some regions.
Israelis will have to vote as a user at their assigned express polling station, barring special circumstances, adding COVID-19-related quarantine, disability or hospitalization.
On the other hand, rain in Israel also reduces the appeal of going to the beach, hiking, or having family picnics, all activities that traditionally compete for voting rights, as most Israelis enjoy a day off.
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