Wednesday, January 6, 2021

Israel update - 19 parties running (so far)

 There are 19 "major" parties running for election in Israel; that being 19 parties the media is, to some degree, paying attention to. There are, of course, many more that do not garner much attention. The 19 are, in no particular order, as follows:


Binyamin Netanyahu (Bibi)'s Hard Conservative Likud. Ya'alon's Left-Centrist Telem. The new "Grey" party lead by Yatom. The economist lead NEP. The left wing Tnufa party lead by Shelah. The new progressive Israelis party lead by Huldai. Orly Levy's Gesher. Jewish Home, lead by retiring leader Rafi Peretz. The far-right Zionist National Union. Bennett's New Right. the Labor party. Sa'ar's new Hope. Yisrael Beiteinu. Lapid's liberal Yesh Atid. and Shas, the haredi party.

You may notice this is far less than 19. This is because each of the remainder could, in some way, split further. 

Gantz's Blue and White could see Gabi Ashkenazi fork off his own party. The Haredi UTJ is itself a merger of Agudat Yisrael and Degel HaTorah. The left wing Meretz, while a unified single party, contains many members that could still see further splits. And the Joint List is, itself a merger of 4 'arab' parties; some of which, are themselves mergers of 2 or more parties. 

Polls right now suggest the only party consistently over 15% popular vote is Likud. Sitting at about 28 of the 120 seats, this suggests the party is on 23% support. New Hope is around 15%, and both Yesh Atid, and New Right (Yamina) is on about 12%. This means the top three parties, combined, are at 50% support, and the top four, at 62%. This compares to a top-4-combined-total of 74% in Italy, and 80% in Germany (on current polling) and, based on last elections, 91% in New Zealand, 91% in Canada, and 92% in the UK. Israeli politics is quite divided at this time. Helped in no small part by the seeming dissolution of Yamina into New Right and the National Union. 

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