Thread by @IsraelexLive

With polls closing on #Israelex5 in just a few minutes, here's a thread of frequently asked questions that I get every election. I will add to them if and as it becomes necessary.

Q: Why don't you cover exit polls?
A: Exit polls in any country are problematic; it's well known they are usually less accurate than the final pre-election polls.

Since it's only a few hours between exit polls and the results start coming in, I prefer to ignore them entirely.

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 votes25.bechirot.gov.il. I update whenever that site does.

I will sometimes let you know when reporters are talking about a change expected in the next update. But often those leaks turn out to be 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"? Who benefits from them?
A: These terms all refer to the same thing: the set of ballots that are counted after the regular ballots are finished. They usually affect the final results by no more than a seat.

Israel doesn't have true absentee voting. If you're overseas on Election Day, you can't vote unless you're a diplomat or serve on a naval vessel (these all voted last week). But day-of, in-person absentee voting is available for those who can't vote at their assigned ballot box.

Special voting booths are set up in hospitals, prisons, and military bases. In addition, there are handicapped-accessible booths that anyone can go to, including citizens who live overseas but happen to be here on the day. Plus the COVID-quarantine booths.

Collectively these make up the "absentee ballots", or the "double envelopes" (so called 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 referred to as the "soldiers' votes" because historically military bases provided the bulk of the absentee ballots. But that hasn't been true for decades now.

For similar reasons, this set of ballots no longer leans right-wing. Charedi and Arab parties are underrepresented but other than that almost anyone can win or lose a seat when the absentee ballots come in. But almost never more than just the one seat.

Q: When you report what percent of the vote has been counted, why doesn't that match the percent that I calculated from the official website?

A: The official website gives you two numbers: how many votes have been counted, and how many eligible voters there were.

This isn't a useful statistic; not all eligible voters voted. After the polls close, the CEC estimates how many voters actually turned out (always a slight underestimate, for reasons not entirely clear). That's the number I use to calculate how much of the vote has been counted.

Q: How do you decide how to refer to each party?

A: The biggest consideration is the limited number of characters in a tweet. The second-biggest is avoiding confusion.

Therefore:
* RZP rather than Religious Zionist Party or Religious Zionism
* Ra'am rather than United Arab List/UAL (can be confused with the Joint List)
* Lieberman rather than the myriad ways to transliterate Israel Beiteinu.