Thread by @IsraelexLive

In advance of reporting on the #Israelex4 results tonight, here's a thread of frequently asked questions that I get every election. I will be adding to it periodically over the course of the day.

Q: Why don't you cover exit polls?
A: Exit polls in any election are problematic; it's well known they are usually less accurate than the final pre-election polls (though Israel's polling moratorium law mitigates that somewhat).

But this cycle's exit polls will be even less useful than usual. Thanks to the pandemic, the CEC set up extra ballot boxes to prevent crowding and infection.

So I will be particularly insistent on ignoring them this time around.

Q: Reporters are all saying that ___ has gained/lost a seat. Why don't you have that result yet?

A: Since I'm not a reporter, I don't have inside connections at the CEC. All I can go by is the official vote tabulations at votes24.bechirot.gov.il. I update whenever the site does.

I will sometimes let you know when reporters are talking about a change expected in the next update. But not always. Sometimes those leaks have been entirely false.

For example, in #Israelex2 there were at one point widespread reports that the next update would show the Joint List dropping by a seat.

I crunched the numbers and saw that this was mathematically impossible. And indeed it did not happen.

So I'm sticking with official sources.

Q: What are "soldiers' votes", "absentee ballots", and "double envelopes"? And who benefits from them?

A: All three of these terms refer to the same thing: the set of ballots that are counted after the regular ballots are finished.

I prefer "absentee ballots" personally.

In Israel, for the most part you either vote on election day or don't vote at all. The only exceptions are soldiers and diplomats overseas, who vote early so their ballots can be collected and returned by Election Day.

But there are those who can't vote at their assigned ballot box: hospital patients, prisoners, disabled people who were assigned to an inaccessible booth, overseas citizens who happen to be here on election day and have no assigned booth because they have no Israeli address.

Add to these this time around the COVID-positive and COVID-quarantined.

The above groups go to special polling booths that are designed to keep ballot workers safe from COVID, or disabled-accessible booths, or special booths set up in hospitals or prisons or embassies abroad.

Collectively these make up the "absentee ballots", or the "double envelopes" (because you put the envelope with your vote inside another envelope with your name, which they check against your home voting booth to ensure you didn't vote twice).

These are also referred to as the "soldiers' votes" because historically soldiers made up the bulk of the absentee ballots.

But that hasn't been true for decades now. Which is also why the absentee ballots don't lean right-wing anymore. They span the political spectrum.

In recent years the parties that do worst in the absentee ballots have been the charedi and Arab parties. But with COVID affecting the numbers this time it's anybody's guess who they'll benefit.

Q: Why does your percent of the vote counted not match the one I calculated on the official website?

A: Different denominators.

The website gives two numbers:
* How many votes were counted
* How many eligible voters there are

This doesn't tell you how many votes are left to count. Not all eligible voters voted!

The number I give is how many votes were counted out of the (estimated) votes actually cast.

Q: How do you decide how to refer to each party? Who are RZP and NEP?

A: The character count limit is obviously the biggest consideration. So:
* RZP rather than Religious Zionist Party
* NEP rather than New Economic Party

But some names are to avoid confusion:
* Lieberman rather than Israel Beiteinu because there are a million ways to transliterate the latter (and also it's longer)
* Ra'am rather than UAL, because UAL stands for United Arab List and everyone will confuse that with the Joint List.

Q: Why don't you put the strengths of the right bloc and left bloc, or the pro-Bibi and anti-Bibi blocs?

A: Because in this election, more than ever, there are no real blocs. There are parties whose alliances may be natural or less natural, but not much more than that.

I received a lot of legitimate criticism last time because "left" included parties like Blue & White (centrist at most) and the Joint List (which included far-right Islamists) while "right" included the charedi parties who ally with the right but have many left-wing policies.

My defense then was that I was using the shorthand common throughout the media.

But then look at the coalition that came out of it, containing shards of every party from far-right to far-left.

So right and left have no meaning anymore. What about Bibi and anti-Bibi?

Well, where would I put Ra'am? Yamina? The charedi parties, who have not entirely ruled out Sa'ar? Can an anti-Bibi bloc containing the Joint List and Yamina really form a coalition?

If we do somehow end up with a coalition, I guarantee it won't be along perfect bloc-by-bloc lines. Who knows which factions will split or defect?

Better to give you the party-by-party numbers and leave the coalition math to you. As I'm fond of saying...

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