Israel General Election Thread: March 17 2015

[The Mikado]

What happens if Likud gets the exact same number of seats as either Jewish Home or the Labour coalition? Which one gets to try to form a coalition?

[The Mikado]

The polls look unusually stable, except for certain scandal-magnet parties.

Who is Shas tanking good for? Jewish Home?

[The Mikado]

It seems like most of the differences between that poll and the others can be attributed to Yachad not hitting the threshold and Likud benefitting from that.

[The Mikado]

After he cannibalized his partners like this, I have to imagine that Lieberman and Bennet are fuming about Netanyahu. It'll be an awkward coalition.

[The Mikado]

Again, what gets to me isn't so much Netanyahu's hawkishness in general as the specific fact that a major plank of his platform is, essentially, outright refusing to try to take advantage of a situation that could, if played right, give him a fighting chance of finally putting his country at peace. How come this man has yet to be run out of the Knesset on a rail?!

I think we have to question whether a plurality of Isreali people care about that.

I have to believe that a plurality of Israeli people would rather live in a democracy at peace than a hybrid regime at perpetual war. I have to.

You have heard the old saying that Israel wants three things: the West Bank, its status as a Jewish state, or democracy, and it can have any two of those? The saying is older than I am and hackeneyed as it is, there is a lot of truth in it. Israel has made it clear that the West Bank is one of its choices.

[The Mikado]

You can also view them as the flip side of the coin from Yesh Atid, a secular-interest party ready to go along with either side (though less so now that Lapid detests Netanyahu). In the coalition-forming Labor or Likud can get either YA or Shas/UTJ and its pick colors policy on things like the draft question (should Haredi yeshiva students be drafted?). The comparison with things like Swedish-interest parties in Finland and Hungarian-interest parties in Romania is spot-on. Voting for them is brilliant if you're agnostic on whether the left or right rules but want the new government to respect your issue.

[The Mikado]

Jewish Home seem to be the most over represented amongst these votes, getting almost double.

Voters who voted before the last-minute swing to Likud?

[The Mikado]

Isn't it about time we opened up a thread on a more populated board like International General about these coalition negotiations?

Also, given the mandatory coalition-building time for the second and third place parties and the time for the election season itself, this hypothetical second election would be...what, October? November?

[The Mikado]

Question: when you say "Today," do you mean "within the next 83 minutes" or is it midnight of the following day?

[The Mikado]

This is going to be quite the government for the next six months. Do Kahlon and Kulanu get wiped out next election for supporting the most right wing government in Israeli history and getting little out of it? Stay tuned.

[The Mikado]

This is going to be quite the government for the next six months. Do Kahlon and Kulanu get wiped out next election for supporting the most right wing government in Israeli history and getting little out of it? Stay tuned.

Is Kahlon not getting Finance? Why do you assume he will get nothing?

He's getting a cabinet ministry, yeah. I meant getting none of his agenda through (because, seriously, no legislation of any type's coming through the 61/120 government).