Israeli General Election: April 9, 2019

[DC Al Fine]

Is there a reason why the Anglophone press transliterates most Israeli party names instead of translating them? E.g. Likud instead of Consolidation.

[DC Al Fine]

Interesting. Thanks.

[DC Al Fine]

Here's a cool chart of political affliation by religious identity.



Why do so many Arab Christians vote for the communists? Is it because they support Palestine and aren't Islamist?

[DC Al Fine]

Why is Ta'al doing so well?

[DC Al Fine]

Why is Ta'al doing so well?

Tibi has always been personally popular among Arab Israelis, and I imagine his break with the Joint List has gotten him a lot more press than usual. Ta'al+Joint List is only polling one seat above or below last time around, which is pure noise.

Does look like his split with the Joint List is even enough that they will both easily clear the threshold.

Yes that's what I meant. Ta'al only had 1 MK? but now they have large chunk of the old Joint List vote. It's a bit surprising.

[DC Al Fine]

Labour primaries:

- as everyone pointed already, the next leadership battle (Shmuli v. Shaffir) is already set
- the Labour list was fairly expected
- the left wing element took a blow
- Labour is now completely a party of social issues, whether they win 5\7\10\12 seats, they cannot claim to be a party in waiting for leadership. historic Labour is officially dead.
- I still hope they don't cross the threshold

Who would you want your left wing vehicle to be? Meretz?

[DC Al Fine]

Why couldn't the Arabs launch new parties if their parties were banned? Canada elected a communist under the "Labour-Progressive" ticket while the Communist Party was banned for example.

[DC Al Fine]

Still not quite understanding this: what was the friction that caused the split between Jewish Home and New Right?

[DC Al Fine]

What are the two Arab tickets calling themselves?

[DC Al Fine]

Party named "Bible Bloc" for Arab and Russian Christians just handed in its list.

Finally a fringe party I can get behind.

I assume these guys aren't going anywhere?

[DC Al Fine]

Kahanism? What's that?

[DC Al Fine]

Blue and White is such a trash name, they should've gone with Israeli Future

Blue and white are Israeli flag colours so maybe they thought it's "patriotic" or something.

If I ever become GodEmperor, I'm passing a law forbidding lame names and forcing parties to choose a name that at least somewhat relates to what they're about.

Israeli Labor Party? Great. United Torah Judaism, sure. "Vigour", "Consolidation", or freaking "Blue White"? Hell no.

[DC Al Fine]

I notice a lot of the lists are rather small. What's the procedure if a party surges after the lists have been submitted and they have more MK's than seats?

[DC Al Fine]

Two questions:

1) What was Kulanu's appeal/core demographic? Why are they on the verge of being squeezed out?

2) I find it puzzling that more of Likud's supporters haven't bailed. In Canada, the Tories can count on 30% of the vote and tramp down schisms because of our previous experience under a divided right and FPTP. That doesn't apply in Israel. If Bibi is in trouble, why haven't more of his voters left for another right wing party or more of his rivals in Likud split to start their own parties?

[DC Al Fine]

Thank you.

[DC Al Fine]

One thing I find interesting about Israeli politics is that it seems like Anglo progressives' politics map onto the left-Arab bloc much more smoothly than Anglo conservatives' politics to the right-Religious bloc. I'm having hard time trying to decide who to support. I can't vote for a corrupt party or an indicted leader given all my complaints about Justin Trudeau without being hypocritical. UTJ is also out because some of their Haredi policies really don't mesh well with Christianity.

I guess I would be a Kulanu-New Right swing voter right now. Would that be ridiculous in Israel or would it kind of make sense?

[DC Al Fine]

Is there any good polling of party support by income, education, or socioeconomic status? If not, could someone provude some broad strokes? Or are the differences comparatively trivial due to the dominance of non-tax and spend issues?

[DC Al Fine]

Is there any good polling of party support by income, education, or socioeconomic status? If not, could someone provude some broad strokes? Or are the differences comparatively trivial due to the dominance of non-tax and spend issues?

As a general rule Likud is the bastion of the poorer, especially Mizrahi working class who live in the area in Israel called the Periphery, which is pretty much anything outside of the wealthy and liberal "Center."  Labor is the party of the Ashkenazi upper class. However Yesh Atid with its emphasis on liberal economics and secularism has actually taken a big bite out of that apple. Meretz is the young people's party, especially in Tel Aviv and in liberal parts of Jerusalem (what few there are).

Older voters tend to be more faithful to the Labor Party of their youth. A lot of people say that young people are more likely to be on the right in Israel , but that's not actually true. Young voters are incredibly polarized, with many being strongly secular liberals who prefer a democratic euro-state, and the others being a very religious group that prefers a Jewish ethno-religious state. The truth, though, is that young voters in Israel are probably some of the most disengaged and disenchanted in the world. They are as a whole very secular and liberal on social and religious issues,but are probably more to the right on security issues. There is also a growing Haredi demographic that is, well, Haredi. There is also a growing demographic of ex-Haredi young people that are fairly anti-Haredi.

Politics is mostly about cultural and ideological identity, though. Labor is fairly centrist for a Labor party, economically,amd Likud is fairly centrist for a new economically liberal party. So there are not huge fissures on those issues. The big questions are really over the Palestinian question and,  perhaps even more than what, the degree to which Israel's democratic character should outweigh, if at all, its Jewish character. There are major issues with religion, race, and culture buries in there, which is why politics are so volatile here.

Thanks. Most of the economic analysis seems reasonable, but I want to push back a bit on the bolded point.

Pew did a very detailed study on religious practice in Israel and found the following among other things.



Unlike the Anglosphere, there doesn't seem to be any significant difference in religious practice between young and old Israeli Jews.

[DC Al Fine]

In some late-breaking list action, Pinchas Idan, the former head of the Israel Airports Authority union, who won 19th spot on the Likud slate and was a close ally of Welfare Minister MK Haim Katz, was disqualified by the Supreme Court today for having held a state job too recently. It's too late to replace him in his slot, which was one of the ones reserved for regional candidates, so everybody at the 20th spot and up gets to move up one spot. Likud is currently polling at an average of 29 seats in the Knesset Jeremy average, so this move works to replace Idan with Michal Shir (an ally of Gideon Saar and representative of the Tel Aviv region).

On this note, because the lists are set, disqualifying a candidate just bumps everyone who's below them on the list up a level, right? So if Ben-Ari is disqualified even as the remainder of the Otzma representatives are allowed to run, Ben-Gvir would be bumped to 7th on their list, not 5th -- which isn't impossible, but is a fairly tall order. It would mean Otzma is likelier not to be represented than to be represented in the next Knesset.

Edit: I do enjoy that Netanyahu's last-minute efforts to unite small right-wing parties seem to have totally failed; in the Kan poll released today, there are no less than seven right-wing parties who have a level of support between 2% and 5% (note the threshold is at 3.25%): from top to bottom, Shas, Kulanu, the United Right, the New Right, Zehut, Yisrael Beiteinu, and Gesher all fit into this category. Bad luck with the threshold for the right looks like the only way for Blue & White to plausibly form a government without Likud; would be deeply amusing if this is the ultimate result of Lieberman's Law.

Is there any particular reason why the Arabs formed joint lists to protect themselves from losing all their seats while the small right wing parties did not?

[DC Al Fine]

Regarding Shas, and this is probably a dumb and slightly roundabout question - they always get described as a Haredi party. But to what extent is that actually the case? I mean, I was under the impression that their electorate was as much traditionalist and based around Mizrahi identity as much as anything else? And aren't the Haredi movements something that is much more Ashkenazi?

The actual leadership has always been exclusively haredi. However, back when Shas were getting 17 seats, most of their electorate was non haredi. These days though with their 5-6 seats they have lost most their non haredi voters so now most of their voters are haredi. The Ashkenazi haredi have their own party (UTJ), with has being the party of Mizrahi Haredi.

There are a few non Haredi voters left, but they’re the black Kippa type from the periphery

What are 'black Kippa types'?

[DC Al Fine]

I'm curious about the Jewish left. What are the major idelogical and demographic differences between Labour, Meretz and Hadash*?

*I know Hadash is more of an Arab party, but my understanding is that they do contain a small contingent of far left Jews. Is that correct?

[DC Al Fine]

How hard is it to get pork in Israel? What are the prices like?

[DC Al Fine]

What are the reasons for Japan's age based voting patterns?

[DC Al Fine]

Very Interesting Poll by the Israel Democracy Institute about Voting behaviour by Age. Almost a complete reversal from the US and most of western Europe.

From my experience, on social issues most Israeli youths are very progressive and accepting. Much less homophobic than their parents etc. So it's sad they don't practice it politically, but I'm not surprised, knowing how many of my friends vote for the traditional right-wing (or worse, Zehut, which gives them an option to think they don't hurt their homosexual friends but instead vote for one of the biggest homophobes in the race).

And you have to realize that when we talk about "Israeli youth" we are talking about a quickly growing Haredi demographic, too. There was a poll of Israeli college students and it had Gantz winning by a bunch with Meretz and Zehut also doing well.  But most Israeli college students are secular and middle class. When you consider the youth demographic as a whole you have to factor in Haredim is changes everything. But my experience is that even Haredi youth are modernizing pretty quickly, just not quickly enough to be politically liberal. Among secular and even national religious youth there is definitely a pretty stark social liberalism--openness to gays, opposition to the rabbinate, liberalism on women's issues, pluralism, etc. But on security and Arab-Jewish relations in some ways the views of young people are much more regressive and atavistic. Thus the lean to the right.

Agreed. The non-Haredi but still religious Jewish groups seem to be fairly young as well:



I've noticed that outside of the South, North American Evangelicals have sort of set up their own seperate subculture which can reduce contact people outside the sub-culture have with them...

I assume the same effect exists in Israel only moreso? How isolated are the various subcultures (Haredi vs National Religious or other religious Jews, vs Secular vs Arab etc) from each other?

[DC Al Fine]

New Right are demanding a recount of the double envelopes. Threatening to appeal to the SC (the irony failed to reach them).

considering how small the margin is I think it would be fair to do a partial recount.

LOL! And I don't. It's going to be close either way, no way to know a recount is more accurate than the first count. I wanted Bennett and Shaked to do well, but they didn't and should suck it up.

The threshold really f**ked over the right this time, as expected of course. NR and Zehut actually got 6 or 7 seats together. From that point of view, 64 Knesset seats is a solid result (though not extraordinary).

With only 64 seats this time it's not a cozy majority and that by itself will probably make this Knesset less uniformly right wing.

Kulanu now having more leverage should make the government less right-wing, at least until they merge with Likud (which I expected all along).

On the other hand, Bennett being out could actually make the government more right-wing as URP can claim more influence. It also helps that Netanyahu "only" needs the Haredim, YB, URP and Kulanu and not two more parties, because Likud tends to pit its coalition parties against each other to prevent the status-quo from changing (which is essentially the Likud agenda). With fewer partners, URP (and YB) can demand more.

What would URP and YB demand from Likud? How about the Haredi?