Israel General Election Thread: March 17 2015

[Zanas]

Elohim Israeli politics are hard to follow !

[Zanas]

So Yisrael Beitenu is running alone this time? Are they willing to only enter into a coalition with Likud, or would they consider one with Labor-Livni et al. ?

[Zanas]

As we haven't posted polls for the election itself in quite some time, and I was starting wondering how the race looked like nowadays, I'll just post the two latest ones, Panel/Maariv and TNS/Walla, don't know how these pollsters are rated.

Labor/Hatnuah 25-26
Likud 22-24
Jewish Home 17-18
Arabs (both aggregate them into one figure) 11-11
Yesh Atid 11-8
Kulanu 9-8
UTJ 7-8
Shas 6-7
Meretz 6-5
Yisrael Beitenu 6-5

I have a confession to make : I thought Jewish Home was the translation of Yisrael Beitenu... Hence a couple misunderstandings here and there. For my defence, Beitenu does mean "Our Home", and I thought Yisrael and Jewish would in fact be the same in Hebrew, why not. So I stand corrected.

I we go back a few polls, we see that Balad alone seldom makes it to the threshold, but they are often counted with UAL-Ta'al at around 5 seats. Hadash alone also gets around 5 or 6 seats. Could someone tell me what are the odds of these different possibilities of coalitions between the Arab lists now ?

And also, can someone elaborate a bit on Kulanu ? From what I quickly read on the wiki, seems like a moderate hero party if there ever was one.

[Zanas]

Is this Arab alliance unprecedented, or at least how much of an effect could it have on the upcoming election ? And could someone throw in 3 or 4 lines about each of the 4 components ? I get what Hadash is, but I cannot really make up my mind on Raam, Taal and Balad.

[Zanas]

How many do you need to establish an official parliamentary group in the Knesset ?

[Zanas]

Isn't there a sub-forum where you could take this rout ? I mean, gee ! This must be the mother of derailing threads, at least for 2015. Well, at least for March 2015.

And nobody even mentioned Palestine ! ^__^

[Zanas]

And now Likud is basically implying the liberal parties are bussing in Arabs and buying votes.

This is disgusting. Even conservative Israelis should be appalled by how Bibi has Americanized their electoral process.

Speaking of which : my brother and I were wondering yesterday evening whether Israeli elections taking place on Tuesday is due to American electoral influence, or other type of influence. Broadly speaking, normal countries vote on Sundays, the sane option, and anglo-saxon influenced countries vote during the week, mainly on Tuesdays or Thursdays, the insane option.

[Zanas]

And now Likud is basically implying the liberal parties are bussing in Arabs and buying votes.

This is disgusting. Even conservative Israelis should be appalled by how Bibi has Americanized their electoral process.

Speaking of which : my brother and I were wondering yesterday evening whether Israeli elections taking place on Tuesday is due to American electoral influence, or other type of influence. Broadly speaking, normal countries vote on Sundays, the sane option, and anglo-saxon influenced countries vote during the week, mainly on Tuesdays or Thursdays, the insane option.

Sunday is a work day in Israel, so no better than any other day. And Saturday would be impossible due to the Jewish Sabbath restrictions. And if Saturday is impossible, so is Friday and, in fact Sunday - otherwise you'd be discriminating against the Muslims and Christians. Hence, not much choice, really.

Well, yeah, actually, still a choice between Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday ! So why Tuesday ?

[Zanas]

I actually went back home without voting because of the massive cue at the ballot.

How is that even possible ?

There are 5.9 million eligible voters in Israel today and there are more than 10.000 polling stations. That's an average of 590 voters per precinct. Turnout is 70%, so 413 voters per precinct. You have more than 12 hours to vote, which means 40 people per hour.

There shouldn't be any line really and certainly not long enough that you need to go home without voting ...

Some precincts are bound to be above the mean, probably around 800 or even 1,000 in urban cores, and people do not distribute themselves well to vote at different hours, they tend to all go at a few selected windows. So I'm not shocked. Still, I get why you get frustrated coming from a country where polls open only Sunday morning till 1 PM and you get 80 % turnout on a bad day...

[Zanas]

The 90 year old grandfather of the Likud MK Elkin collapsed and died at the polling station, right after voting.

He voted Labour, Elohim immediately stroke him.

[Zanas]

Of the three kinds of love (including heterosexual and homosexual) the Soviets, really, only cared about the third: Love of the Communist Party

And that is only natural, cause it's obviously the only true and important love there is.

/digression