Israeli General Election 2013

[minionofmidas]

Hey France is nice but we prefer Israel to be more like Scandinavia! nice chart, rubbish for real diagnosis but amusing

Yeah, it's pretty well done.

[minionofmidas]

Their news feed is absolutely terrific. Really makes excellent reading. My personal favorite so far is:

11:48Бней-Брак: женщина с младенцем оступилась на лестнице, младенец травмирован

1148: Bnei-Brak: A woman with a child tripped on a staircase, the child is hurt

That is beautiful.

[minionofmidas]

About equidistant from Meretz, Ta'al and UAL, with Hadash marginally further away.

[minionofmidas]

There are no parties with any cross-community support whatsoever, unless you count a small handful of Jewish Stalinists sticking with Hadash, or you count the Druze vote's scattering across all the larger Jewish parties bar the far right plus all the Arab parties as cross-community support for all of these.

[minionofmidas]

About 90% of Hadash voters are Are Arab. I don't think the differences between voting Hadash and Balad are very ideological, but rather are more personality based.

you obviously haven't spoken to many Balad or Hadash voters. Hadash gets roughly 10K Jewish vote across the country (though in 2009 they nicked some votes from Meretz and got 13K Jewish votes cast to them). This time Meretz and Da'am will both dig into Hadash Jewish and Arab strength.

5# in Meretz's list is Isawi Farig from the triangle region and he is aiming to bring 60K arab votes to Meretz.

I'm not sure in what way you are disagreeing with me here

Maybe with the "not very ideological" bit?

[minionofmidas]

Lapid has promised not to sit in a right-haredi-Lapid coalition and I think that such a coalition would be unlikely. Then again, politicians don't often keep their promises.

Fixed that for you.

[minionofmidas]

Political ads are on TV now, and the one making the biggest noise is this one from Shas, which drew wide ranging condemnation for its perceived  anti Russian racism.

http://youtu.be/A-auotGWUeM

I find it extremely funny considering most of my acquaintances' first thought of what a stereotypical Russian would look like is me, and I look very much like the dude in that ad...

He doesn't look Russian... she kind of does, though.

[minionofmidas]

Wait... I'm aware of a rather divergent but nonetheless clearly "Jewish" people in India... the opposite end of India.

These people are news to me.

[minionofmidas]

But still well enough to come in first.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that not happening can be safely ruled out.

[minionofmidas]

How long til polls close?

[minionofmidas]

So I take it Israeli exit polls are all over the place?

How long til we get somewhat dependable results?

[minionofmidas]

Ooh! This is new! Labor officials: we're not ruling out endorsing Lapid for PM

How's that going to go, Lapid-Labor-Shas-Meretz-Hatnuah?
Looks a little unworkable to me.

[minionofmidas]

Yes, gaining seats: how completely disastrous.

Only four, and coming in 3rd when they were destined to gain official opposition status again as their first great step in their long march back to power as they once knew it?

It's not happening. No matter what.

[minionofmidas]

I presume these are results from those precincts already finished counting.

[minionofmidas]

First Black (ie Jewish Ethiopian) woman in the Knesset, elected for Yesh Atid.

[minionofmidas]

So Israel uses D'Hondt with a marginal amendation that didn't affect the results at all, at least this time.
If they'd be using Hare-Niemeyer or Ste-Lague (keeping the 2% threshold) Likud and Lapid would be done one seat each and Livni and Kadima up one, bringing the unequivocally right wing parties down to 59. (Not that it would really matter, there's still no way to form a government without Likud.)

[minionofmidas]

So Kadima lost all its votes in the volatile delusional centre and hung on on the strength of some very insular communities.

[minionofmidas]

It's looking like JH will gain a seat and get 12, and RAAM-TAAL will lose one to get 4.

Did this turn out accurate?

[minionofmidas]

Something I dont understand after reading about Israeli politics, why is it a given that Arab parties would not be invited into a coalition? With 20% of Israeli citizens being Arab it seems strange. No surprise Arab turnout is low.

You find that strange? You haven't been paying much attention.

[minionofmidas]

Well, he sure knows what he's doing, then.

[minionofmidas]

Largely for my own amusement, and because I could because I had taken down the preliminary figures, I calculated the parties' percentages of the "envelope vote" (I'm sure I could have found this somewhere, too. ) Oh yeah, because I hadn't taken down the others' preliminary raw vote - only their combined percentage, 6.99% - these numbers are technically estimated but the rounding errors shouldn't exceed a point here or there.

Likud 24.79% (vs 23.19 day for a total of 23.32)
Lapid 16.71 (14.19, 14.32)
Bennett 15.24 (8.76, 9.12)
Labour 10.57 (11.45, 11.39)
Shas 7.39 (8.83, 8.75)
Livni 4.37 (5.02, 4.99)
Meretz 3.89 (4.59, 4.54)
UTJ 2.88 (5.31, 5.17)
Kadima 2.24 (2.09, 2.10)
UAL 1.20 (3.80, 3.65)
Hadash 0.91 (3.12, 3.00)
Balad 0.76 (2.66, 2.56)
other 9.04 (6.99, 7.10)

[minionofmidas]

Largely for my own amusement, and because I could because I had taken down the preliminary figures, I calculated the parties' percentages of the "envelope vote" (I'm sure I could have found this somewhere, too. ) Oh yeah, because I hadn't taken down the others' preliminary raw vote - only their combined percentage, 6.99% - these numbers are technically estimated but the rounding errors shouldn't exceed a point here or there.

Likud 24.79% (vs 23.19 day for a total of 23.32)
Lapid 16.71 (14.19, 14.32)
Bennett 15.24 (8.76, 9.12)
Labour 10.57 (11.45, 11.39)
Shas 7.39 (8.83, 8.75)
Livni 4.37 (5.02, 4.99)
Meretz 3.89 (4.59, 4.54)
UTJ 2.88 (5.31, 5.17)
Kadima 2.24 (2.09, 2.10)
UAL 1.20 (3.80, 3.65)
Hadash 0.91 (3.12, 3.00)
Balad 0.76 (2.66, 2.56)
other 9.04 (6.99, 7.10)

Here are the actual double envelope results.

There must have been some precinct or two missing from the first set of data I took down, then, as the raw numbers are marginally higher for all parties.

Just started on some maps.

By sub-district? Since those (as percentages only if I saw correctly) were in that one map link?

[minionofmidas]

One thing about the Israel system that does not make sense to me is the issue of party splits.  It is interesting that parties like Hatnuah can be split from Kadima, Am Shalem from Shahs, and Otzma LeYisrael from National Union and yet still retain MKs that joined the split.  It seems to be if the vote is for the Party/List and not the individual members, in a split or conflict, the Party/List leadership should be able to replace a MK from the next available person from the list.  If the vote is for the candidate then one can said that the mandate is for the person and if that person breaks with the party he or she belonged to then they still can stay as MK but be part of a new or different party.

A list is an alliance of people. The people get voted for, as a package. If you can't keep that alliance together, why should some random faction that happens to be the majority keep all the seats?

This is not to say that that kind of talking point doesn't get wheeled out every other time an MP elected through a list system switches parties,  but it's still bogus.

[minionofmidas]

Right - Likud-Beiteinu, Jewish Home, Otzma LeYisrael (34.2%, 43 seats)
Left - Labor, Hatnuah, Meretz (20.9%, 27 seats)
Centre - Yesh Atid, Kadima, Ale Yarok* (17.6%, 21 seats)

Drop Ale Yarok.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Yeah, this grouping doesn't make sense. UTJ is an Ashkenazi party, Shas is the Mizrahi party (and in terms of where the vote comes from, not exclusively a Haredi party either.)

[minionofmidas]

If Lapid manages to maintain his popularity, the next elections could be interesting.

He has no choice but to join the government in a subordinate position, and therefore no chance to do that.