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Election Day Handbook: Build Your coalition

[additional-authors]
February 29, 2020
Blue and White party chairman Benny Gantz casts his ballot at a voting station in Rosh Haayin, Israel, on Election Day, Sept. 17, 2019. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)

We call this format a Timesaver Guide to Israel’s Coming Elections. This will be a usual feature on Rosner’s Domain until next Election Day, March 2, 2020. We hope to make it short, factual, devoid of election hype.

 

Bottom Line

Turnout is key, repeat in a few months is very likely.

 

Get prepared

Our short guide of what to look for on Election Day is here. Best-case scenarios presented in this brief: For Netanyahu: a 61-seat coalition. Such a coalition would enable him to govern and also could mitigate his legal troubles. For Gantz: an ability to form a minority government that could survive long enough for Netanyahu to be forced out.

Also, listen to my conversation with Dana Weiss on Rosner’s Podcast (here). She is one of Israel’s top political analysts, and says this (among many other things): “If you take PM Netanyahu [out of the equation], then the next morning you would have a [unity] government in Israel… because if you look at Blue and White… most of its leaders are more Likudniks than anything else, but there are not in Likud because of personal issues with PM Netanyahu… if you Netanyahu out the whole political map would reframe itself”.

 

The Parties

By law, the last polls published by the media are from Friday night. We cannot publish new polls until the polls are closed on Monday night Israel time. But here are the average seats for each party, calculated from the polls of the last ten days and rounded.

A few things to know about the parties as you examine the graph:

Likud’s numbers are rising. It is now expected to be the party with most seats.

The Joint List (the Arab party) is moving up. Arab voters seem more prone to vote in national election. If they do – the potential is as high as close to 20 seats.

Israel Beiteinu seems to decline. This will give its leader, Avigodor Lieberman, an incentive to join a coalition.

Yamina is also in slight decline. This highlights a fascinating social process. The Zionist-religious camp no longer see an urgent need to have its own party (for more about that, listen to my conversation with Yair Ettinger and Shlomo Fischer – here).

 

 

The Blocs

The pro-Bibi camp has about 57 seats according to the average of polls. It reached as high as 59 is some of them. So Prime Minister Netanyahu might be close to sealing the deal of a narrow right-religious coalition. His opponents have more seats, but a more complicated way to having a coalition. They can work for unity (their condition: No Bibi as PM. Likud is unlikely to take the bait). They can form a minority government based on support from the outside of the Arabs, or both the Arabs and Israel Beiteinu. This will be very tricky and unstable, but some Blue and White leaders believe that such move will pave the way for Netanyahu’s bloc to crumble. Maybe – maybe not. Note that for Benny Gantz to build a majority coalition necessitates more than one additional party from the Bibi-bloc (while not losing parties form his own bloc).

 

 

Come back for updates and analysis on Election Night, Monday evening Israel Time.

 

 

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