Electoral, statistical, and legal analysis of Israeli elections, and elections, and elections...
Nov 2, 2022 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: I am retiring this Twitter account, effective immediately, in accordance with a promise I made to myself when it was created.
This is a difficult decision but an indisputably correct one. Explanation follows below.
I first covered an Israeli election in 2015, when I noticed that none of the media organizations knew how to correctly convert vote counts to seats in real time. I decided to fill that void by live-reporting the results on my personal Twitter account.
Nov 1, 2022 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
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.
Oct 31, 2022 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
There's an interesting - and almost entirely inconsequential - electoral drama surrounding the Likud right now.
The Likud printed out thousands of dummy ballot slips to give out to its activists, so that they can hand out to people to tell them who to vote for.
The dummy slips are supposed to be identical to real ones so that you can, in a pinch, put them in the envelope as a real one.
Oct 9, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Based on this weekend's polls, here is the range of expected seats for each of the parties and the two major blocs:
Likud: 28.8-36.7 seats
Yesh Atid: 20.0-27.0
Religious Zionism: 10.0-15.5
National Unity: 8.7-13.8
Shas: 6.0-10.5
UTJ: 4.9-9.1
Israel Beiteinu: 3.9-7.6 (2.7% chance of falling below threshold)
Labor: 3.7-7.3 (4.4% chance of falling below threshold)
Apr 6, 2022 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
Israel's governing coalition no longer has a majority in the Knesset.
This is very big news - and paradoxically will have little practical or immediate effect.
Under Israeli law, a coalition ends before its time only if: 1) It is taken down from without 2) It fails to pass a budget 3) It voluntarily dissolves, e.g. by resignation of the prime minister
None of these are relevant to the current circumstances.
Jun 3, 2021 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
The new coalition has collected and submitted the 61 signatures necessary to replace the Knesset speaker. It looks like the opposition isn't waiting to see if Levin will delay their vote; they want to hold it as soon as possible.
Assuming Lapid has everything in order, expect him to schedule the vote on the new coalition as soon as possible - Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest, so Netanyahu won't have time to attract defectors.
Clarification that I was not previously aware of: The 7 days begin only once the Knesset is officially informed of his success, which will happen Monday. So he has until June 14.
(Apologies, I posted the previous tweet having just got home from the supermarket and saw the news.)
Jun 2, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I am getting similar questions from a lot of people: How is it that Yamina can demand so much, including the prime ministry, despite having only 7 seats?
My younger and smarter brother cannily pointed out that this situation is very similar to the flagpole question in Chapter 12 of the truly excellent book "More Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School" by Louis Sachar.
Read it and work through the problems and you'll understand.
The voters: the 120 members of Israel's parliament, the Knesset.
The method: Secret ballot.
The position: President of Israel, an apolitical and mostly ceremonial posting.
The powers: Selection of future holders of the prime ministerial mandate and granting of pardons.
The term length: 7 years, no second term allowed.
May 31, 2021 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Yesterday, the biggest hurdle before the Bennett/Lapid government - getting Bennett to agree to it - was officially overcome.
But there are other hurdles. For the coalition to succeed, everything on this list must go right.
In my subjective opinion, from most to least thorny:
1: Time
Lapid's coalition requires four more parties who haven't yet signed on: Blue & White, New Hope, Yamina, and Ra'am.
He has less than 2.5 days to make them all happy. Sorting out who gets how many cabinet and committee positions will take him right up to the deadline.
May 30, 2021 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
For the benefit of my foreign followers - particularly Americans who are unfamiliar with parliamentary democracy - I'm going to break down exactly where Israeli politics stand at the moment.
To become prime minister after an election, you need to form a coalition. This requires two steps:
1) You need the legal right (the "mandate") to present a coalition for approval. 2) The coalition must pass an up-or-down vote among the 120 members of the Knesset.
May 28, 2021 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
I finally heard an explanation as to why some are claiming #Israelex5 is going to be held on October 5, rather than my prediction of September 30.
The October date is a possibility, but the logic is based on several assumptions, many true, one doubtful, and one false.
It goes like this: By law, #Israelex5 is scheduled for Tuesday, September 21. But this is the first day of Sukkot, so you need to push it off to the following Tuesday, September 28. But this is Simchat Torah, so you need to push it off to the following Tuesday, October 5.
No changes:
Likud 30
Yesh Atid 17
Shas 9
Blue & White 8
Yamina 7
Lieberman 7
Labor 7
UTJ 7
New Hope 6
RZP 6
Meretz 6
Joint List 6
Ra'am 4
Updated candidate chart (I'm not calling it "Candidates at risk" anymore because the results are pretty much final and nobody here is at risk):
No changes:
Likud 30
Yesh Atid 17
Shas 9
Blue & White 8
Yamina 7
Lieberman 7
Labor 7
UTJ 7
New Hope 6
RZP 6
Meretz 6
Joint List 6
Ra'am 4
Candidates at risk:
The Joint List continues to fall and is in some ways now more likely than Shas to lose a seat (in contrast to what I said in my tweet of two minutes ago!).
If that's the case, the Likud really might gain a seat at their expense as more votes come in.
Mar 25, 2021 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
With the CEC actively tallying the absentee ballots for #Israelex4, let's talk a bit about how the results might change.
The first thing to realize is that nobody knows how the absentee ballots will lean, because this year they include COVID patients and citizens voting in the airport on their way into the country and other demographically ambiguous groupings.
Mar 24, 2021 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
So, with what appears to be all of the regular ballots counted, and the CEC about to start on the absentee ballots, where do we stand with #Israelex4?
The party closest to the threshold is Ra'am, but it is not even close to being in danger. We would have to count 916,502 absentee ballots without finding a single Ra'am vote for the party to fall, and there just aren't that many.
Mar 24, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
#Israelex4 major update: 1,873,416 votes tallied (42.13% of the vote).
Results so far:
Likud 32
Yesh Atid 16
Shas 10
UTJ 9
Yamina 8
Lieberman 8
RZP 7
Blue & White 7
New Hope 6
Labor 6
Joint List 6
Meretz 5
Ra'am has fallen below the threshold!
Ra'am is at 3.24% of the vote, less than 300 votes below the threshold (which stands at 60525 votes).
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).
Mar 23, 2021 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
Turnout for #Israelex4 at 10:00 was 14.8%, slightly higher than #Israelex3's 14.5% turnout at the same time of day.
This is the first time in history that the Jewish Home, previously the Mafdal, previously Mizrachi, is not running in the election. It's the first time the letter ב has been freed up. This is the end of an era.
