Live Commentary
12:13pm Friday Nearly all votes have now been counted, and Meretz (3.16%) is still below the 3.25% threshold, while Balad has slid to 2.90%. According to Wikipedia, current results would give Netanyahu’s bloc 64 of the 120 Knesset seats.
9:20pm With the count now at 93.0%, Balad had been going backwards and is now at 2.96%, 0.29% below the 3.25% threshold. Meretz is also still below the threshold at 3.15%. But even if Meretz crosses the threshold, Netanyahu will have a majority. It’s time to call it. Projection: Netanyahu’s bloc will win a Knesset majority. That means the era of frequent Israeli elections is likely over, and the next election won’t be held for about four years.
7:52am Count now up to 88.8%, little change in results. If the Joint Arab List had not split into Hadash Ta’al and Balad, the combined total vote for that list may have denied Netanyahu a majority if Meretz had also crossed the threshold. By splitting, they risked Netanyahu winning a majority if one of the new parties didn’t make the threshold, and Balad is unlikely to make it.
6:41am Thursday With 87.6% counted, little change on the previous results, with Meretz (3.19%) and Balad (3.03%) still below the 3.25% threshold. Remaining votes should be counted over the next few days with the final result to be declared next Wednesday.
7:24pm With 84.3% counted, little change with Meretz (3.20%) and Balad (3.05%) still below the 3.25% threshold. On current numbers, a Haaretz update gives Netanyahu’s bloc 65 of the 120 seats. The only realistic hope for the anti-Netanyahu parties is for both Meretz and Balad to cross the threshold.
6:19pm That last batch was left-leaning, with Netanyahu’s bloc down to a combined 48.1%.
6:16pm With 79.8% counted, Meretz is up to 3.23%, just below the 3.25% threshold, while Balad is at 3.07%. Labor has 3.60%, Hadash Ta’al 3.94% and Ra’am 4.25%.
6:07pm It’s not just the parties who are currently below the threshold that is helping Netanyahu; his four parties’ bloc currently has 50.3% of the vote combined.
5:36pm With 71.3% counted in Israel, Ra’am receives a big boost and is up to 3.86%, well above the 3.25% threshold. But Hadash Ta’al, another Arab party, is teetering at 3.33%, while Meretz falls to 3.05% and Balad has 2.79%.
5:07pm The Danish election was also held Tuesday. The left-leaning “Red Bloc” of parties won 90 of the 179 seats, a one seat majority. The right-leaning “Blue Bloc” won 73 seats, and a new centrist party won the remaining 16 seats. The left retains office after winning in June 2019. They will be relieved not to have to depend on the Moderates.
4:33pm With 62.4% counted, the Arab party Hadash Ta’al drops back to 3.38%, Meretz to 3.17%, Balad to 2.75% and Ra’am to 2.47%. It’s looking as if Balad and Ra’am are done for, giving Netanyahu a bigger than expected majority.
3:59pm An update in the Haaretz live blog says that currently Netanyahu’s bloc would win 68 of the 120 Knesset seats. That’s with Meretz, Balad and Ra’am missing the threshold, and I think Meretz will make it on later counting.
3:52pm With 44.6% counted, Labor is up to 3.66% and Meretz to 3.24%, so both will probably clear the threshold. However, Balad has 3.11% and United Arab List (Ra’am) 2.87% – they’re both in serious jeopardy.
2:49pm With 34.6% counted, there are four parties that are just above or just below the 3.25% threshold: Labor (3.27%), the Arab party Balad (3.14%), the United Arab List (3.09%) and the left-wing Meretz (2.67%). Labor and Meretz should gain in later counting, but I’m not sure about the Arab parties.
12:38pm In past Israeli elections, the first votes counted have been skewed towards right-wing parties as Jerusalem reports relatively quickly, and the religious parties do well there. Tel Aviv reports later, and the left do better there.
12:35pm Turnout for the Israeli election was 71.3%. Official results are here, but unhelpfully don’t tell us how much has been counted. With a 71.3% turnout and 6.79 million overall electors, there should be 4.84 million votes. So 627,000 have been counted so far, which is 13.0% of turnout.
7:21am Wednesday: Exit polls give Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc of Likud, Shas, UTJ and Religious Zionists 61-62 of the 120 Knesset seats, enough for a majority. The anti-Netanyahu parties combined have 54-55 and an Arab party that is not aligned with the current government has the remaining four seats. Early exit polls have been wrong before, and we’ll need to wait for actual results.
Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.
The Israeli election will be held today, after a government formed to keep out former PM Benjamin Netanyahu collapsed in June. The 120 members of the Knesset are elected by national proportional representation with a 3.25% threshold. A majority requires 61 seats.
Polls close at 7am AEDT Wednesday. Exit polls will be released soon after polls close, but the Election Day count is unlikely to be finalized until late Wednesday afternoon AEDT. There will be small additional counting over the next few days.
Right-wing parties that are likely to support Netanyahu are his own Likud, the religious Shas and UTJ, and the far-right Religious Zionists. The final allowed polls were published by Friday; they give these right-wing parties a combined 60-62 Knesset seats, while the current governing parties have 54-56 seats. An Arab party that is not part of the government has the remaining four seats.
Two Arab parties – Hadash-Ta’al and Ra’am – are consistently shown as winning four seats, meaning they are just above the 3.25% threshold. If either were to drop below this threshold, they would win no seats and Netanyahu’s bloc would be advantaged and win a majority. The Arab Joint List split into two parties and one of the offshoots is unlikely to beat the threshold.
The biggest loser of this election is likely to be the right-wing Yamina party, which joined the anti-Netanyahu government under party leader and former PM Naftali Bennett. Yamina has joined with Jewish Home, and will run under the Jewish Home name, but is unlikely to surpass the threshold.
The biggest election winner is likely to be the Religious Zionists, which currently hold seven Knesset seats. Polls have them winning 12-15 seats to be the third biggest party behind Likud and the liberal Yesh Atid.
Other recent election results
After losing Sunday’s Brazilian presidential runoff election by 50.9-49.1, far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro has not yet conceded defeat. However, some of his key allies have accepted the result. Leftist winner Lula will be sworn in as president on January 1, 2023.
Green Alexander Van der Bellen was easily re-elected Austrian president on October 9 with 56.7% of the vote, avoiding a runoff. The Austrian president is largely a symbolic figurehead.
At the October 3 election in the Canadian province of Quebec, the conservative CAQ won 41.0% of the vote and 90 of the 125 seats under first past the post. Four other parties split the remaining vote, with each winning between 12.9% and 15.4%.
At the October 9 election in the German state of Lower Saxony, the centre-left SPD won 33.4% of the vote (down 3.5%), the conservative CDU 28.1% (down 5.5%), the Greens 14.5% (up 5.8%), the far-right AfD 11.0% (up 4.8%) and the pro-business FDP 4.7% (down 2.8%). As the FDP missed the 5% threshold, the SPD and Greens will have a combined majority of 81 of the 146 seats.
While this result is encouraging for the left in Germany, the combined vote percentage for the current federal governing SPD, Greens and FDP has dropped into the mid 40s from 52.0% at the September 2021 German federal election.
Right-wing governments have taken office in Italy and Sweden after winning elections in September.
Israel feels itself as a country under siege, in permanent peril of being wiped out by its neighbours. That’s not the ideal environment to promote democracy. The people may vote, but they self-limit to parties and leaders that ensure compact unity, self-reliance, devastating defence capability, etc. Netanyahu and the Likud understand that perfectly well.
On my visit to Israel some years ago, there was an election on (when isn’t there one on?).
At the time, the open air advertising was all jumbo portraits of the candidates, with a few slogans. It appears nothing has changed….
It’s surprising we don’t hear more talk about the VERY unstable democracy that is Israel that has nuclear weapons, and a far right political center.
Anyway, I expect they’ll be doing another one of these things in 6 months again.
“south says:
Tuesday, November 1, 2022 at 9:07 pm
It’s surprising we don’t hear more talk about the VERY unstable democracy that is Israel that has nuclear weapons, and a far right political center.”
1) “VERY unstable democracy”…. it’s a very stable form of “instability”.
2) “nuclear weapons”… they are allies of the West, hence their nuclear weapons are not targeted at us.
3) “far right political center”… For as long as their behaviour is predictable, the West doesn’t care if they are “right” or “left” in Israel.
You can tell how honest and unbiased a reporter is by how often they use the term “left wing.”
South says:
Tuesday, November 1, 2022 at 9:07 pm
It’s surprising we don’t hear more talk about the VERY unstable democracy that is Israel that has nuclear weapons, and a far right political center.
Anyway, I expect they’ll be doing another one of these things in 6 months again.
==============================
Israel is not an unstable democracy. It’s not a democracy. Quite apart from the apartheid and military regime in the Occupied Territories, even within the Green Line democracy is a fiction.
Here are some examples.
Israel’s nation-state law discriminates between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens.
Thousands of people (including hundreds of children) are detained under indefinite “administrative detention” without ever seeing a judge and in some cases administratively detained after a judge actually ordered to release them. This doesn’t happen only to Palestinians, it happens to Israeli citizens, Arabs and (very few) Jews as well.
Non-Jewish Israeli citizens are often arrested, charged, convicted and severely punished for offences for which Jewish-Israelis are not.
Palestinians and Israeli Arabs are regularly arrested for “incitement” on social media while Israeli Jews can and do post the most vile Nazi-like stuff with impunity.
Non-Jewish Israeli citizens cannot buy a property, or even rent one, in many parts of the country.
Residents of East Jerusalem, annexed by law of the Israeli Parliament, are not entitled to Israeli citizenship. They are often stripped of their residency status if they go overseas or sometimes even to the West Bank.
The right to protest is severely limited for Arab-Israelis and some Jews. Protests are met with police violence and numerous arrests. Some people are often ‘invited’ to the basements of the security service (Shabak) for a ‘friendly warning’ about what may happen to them if they participate in protests.
There is no legal way for a Jewish Israeli citizen to marry a non-Jewish Israeli citizen (and sometimes even Jewish Israeli citizens who are not recognised by the religious authorities as sufficiently Jewish – there are hundreds of thousands of Jews on a list of people not allowed to marry in Israel).
A woman cannot get a divorce without the agreement of her husband, some women are kept in that position for decades, sometimes until death, without ever being able to remarry.
————-
And in election news… by 8pm Israel time turnout is highest since 1999, which is not good news for the smaller parties, as they will need a higher number of votes to reach the 3.25% threshold.
Any news on the Denmark yet? Anything rotten?
Official results are here, Google translate helps
https://votes24.bechirot.gov.il/
B.S. Fairman at 10.04 am
Not rotten in Denmark but pretty fragmented. Many colours used at results page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Danish_general_election (scroll to results)
If you put your money on a rascal named Lars Rasmussen, who had previously used funds from the main Tory party Venstre to buy himself expensive suits but this time ran for the “Moderates”, then you might feel as flushed as he apparently is. Talk is of him as the “kingmaker”, though of course the PM Frederiksen is a woman.
No counting yet in Greenland. Overall Social Democrats have marginally increased by 2 to 50 seats, Green Left also up 1 to 15, but other allies the Red-Green Alliance and the “Danish Social Liberal Party” dropped badly, leaving left bloc just short. The left bloc is on 88 without the one seat expected from Greenland (slow counting there now, just 5% done). They need 90, so are just one seat short.
The threshold in Denmark is 2%, not 4% in Sweden, and there are 24 seats shared among small parties between 2 and 4%. The white nationalist Peoples Party is down to 2.6% but a lot of their vote went to a new racist outfit called Denmark Democrats.
Unless Rasmussen helps Frederiksen’s bloc retain power, instability will be on top.
Sprocket, that’s the link for the last Israeli election. The current election link is here:
https://votes25.bechirot.gov.il/
So far they’ve counted about 10% of all votes that will turn out.
Thanks Adrian
B.S. Fairman at 10.04 am
Update on Greenland. Now up to 30% counted. One of the two seats there looks certain for the Social Democrats, taking the left bloc overall to 89, when 90 is needed. The other seat in Greenland looked close, between the Community of the People group, which is the biggest group in the Greenland legislature, and the centre right group called Democrats, with another populist group not far behind. That was with fewer voters counted, but now Community of the People are clearly in second place. In the previous election they and the Social Democrats had one seat each, and that result now looks like being repeated. The Greenland result could be decisive. Rasmussen may yet have his sartorial ambitions trimmed by Greenland.
So, counting the two Greenland seats, the left bloc would get to 90 out of 179 seats.
The informal rate in Greenland is still over 4 times that in Faroe Islands. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Danish_general_election
And for Greenland: https://qinersineq.gl/ (votes mainly just in one area so far)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_Greenland
B.S. Fairman at 10.04 am
That rascal Mr Rasmussen may have to cancel his appointments in Savile Row.
‘COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was in a strong position to remain in power after her Social Democrats won the most votes Tuesday in Denmark’s election and a center-left bloc in Parliament that backs her appeared set to retain a majority by just one seat.
The result was preliminary and based on the assumption that a vote count in Greenland expected early Wednesday would give the autonomous Danish territory’s two seats to the center-left bloc.
“I am so thrilled and proud. We have gotten the best election result in 20 years,” Frederiksen told supporters early Wednesday in Copenhagen.’
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/danish-elections-pave-center-government-92465228
Now 62% counted in Greenland and it looks very likely both seats there going left.
Greenland count now at 96%. Left has won both seats. Left bloc returned to power.
Regarding Israel, I make a distinction between the actual state and its occupied territories. Where the latter is concerned, there’s no doubt that apartheid exists, even if the A-word is never applied to it.
Israel itself can be called a democracy, but for the reasons Andrew Gold outlines, a very flawed one.
The just-held election is, sadly, likely to return another rightwing government with an even more extreme religious-Zionist element.
However, it’s worth noting that even in a flawed democracy such as Israel’s, voting matters.
It’s likely that if Israel’s Arab minority had voted with the same levels of participation as Jewish citizens did, the country would be looking at a more progressive government. Israeli leftists constantly call on Israeli Arabs, or Israeli-Palestinians, to turn out and vote for that reason.
Arab journalists writing in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, stated that too many people in their community felt too alienated and neglected to participate in Israel’s political process.
One even said she was tired of progressive Jews wanting the Arabs to help them build the Zionist left version of Israel.
Many Afro-Americans feel similarly and imagine their boycott of voting is somehow sending a message of defiance to a system which oppresses them. But that only benefits those who do oppress them. Refusing to vote achieves nothing.
Even a “Zionist left” version of Israel would be better for the Arabs and the peace process than what we are likely to see from this election.
The Israeli left, Arabs as well as Jews, must link up and seriously address issues affecting their communities, if they are ever to have a chance of moving their country towards a better future.
Sir Henry Parkes says:
Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 4:05 pm
‘…
Israeli leftists constantly call on Israeli Arabs, or Israeli-Palestinians, to turn out and vote for that reason.
…’
—————-
My understanding is that there is not a whole lot of point because all of the non-Arab parties, including the left parties, promise NOT to accept votes from the Arab reps.
Even if Meretz and Balad get over the line there’s no functional way for Netanyahu’s opponents to form a coalition or do anything other than stop him from becoming PM, most of them would never work with Hadash-Ta’al, nevermind Balad, and Balad probably wouldn’t cut deals with any non-Arab parties anyway.
Boerwar says:
Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 6:44 pm
Sir Henry Parkes says:
Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 4:05 pm
‘…
Israeli leftists constantly call on Israeli Arabs, or Israeli-Palestinians, to turn out and vote for that reason.
…’
—————-
My understanding is that there is not a whole lot of point because all of the non-Arab parties, including the left parties, promise NOT to accept votes from the Arab reps.
____________________________________________________________
It was certainly once the case that the main Israeli parties would not accept the votes of Arab parties, but there were still Arab MPs serving in predominantly Jewish alliances.
However, last year the United Arab List (Ra’am), an Islamic party no less, led by Mansour Abbas, joined a multi-party coalition government, which also included some centre-right Jewish parties.
If there is any encouragement to take from this, it is that the taboo on dealing with Arab political interests has been broken and more Arabs are moving into the mainstream of Israeli society.
What now needs to be done, is for the Zionist left to reach out to Israel’s Palestinian minority and for both to realise their common interests. This also requires Israeli Arabs to get out and vote on election day.
I should have added that a successful alliance of progressive Jews and Arabs in Israel also requires that Arab parties settle their differences and work together.
They should at least do this with a view to ending Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and removing discrimination against Arabs living in Israel.
“You can tell how honest and unbiased a reporter is by how often they use the term “left wing.””
And how often they use the term “right wing” and “far right”.
In fact, for most of them “left wing” is ok but there’s nothing between ‘centre-right’ and ‘far right’, in other words anything outside the centre is regarded disdainfully as ‘far right’.
Sir Henry Parkes
Thanks for bringing some balance and nuance to the discussion, based on FACT.
Alpo
I think your 1st November 5.48 post was right on the money, too.
Sir HP
Thanks. Good to know.
Appreciate your words BTSays.
“BTSays says:
Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 9:19 pm
“You can tell how honest and unbiased a reporter is by how often they use the term “left wing.””
And how often they use the term “right wing” and “far right”.
In fact, for most of them “left wing” is ok but there’s nothing between ‘centre-right’ and ‘far right’, in other words anything outside the centre is regarded disdainfully as ‘far right’.”
“Left” and “right” have become meaningless concepts in politics. They are relative terms that only bring confusion and open the door to facile, manipulative propaganda.
So, there is an “ALP left” and an “ALP right”. Liberals also recognise an internal “Liberal left” and “Liberal right”. But if you look at what each one of those actually think, you conclude that the “ALP right” is actually still “left”, whereas the “Liberal left” is actually still “right”.
In any event, I prefer to use words that describe the main aspects of the political program of each party in a nutshell: Social Democratic (ALP), Environmentalist (Greens), Socialist (Socialist Alliance), Neoliberal (Liberals), Conservative (Nationals), Populist (PHON, Palmer)….
”
BTSayssays:
Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 9:19 pm
“You can tell how honest and unbiased a reporter is by how often they use the term “left wing.””
And how often they use the term “right wing” and “far right”.
In fact, for most of them “left wing” is ok but there’s nothing between ‘centre-right’ and ‘far right’, in other words anything outside the centre is regarded disdainfully as ‘far right’.
”
Are you saying that Italian PM Meloni’s party, which western media bend over backwards to call as far-right party instead of fascist party because it is unthinkable for a fascist government to be part of NATO and G7 alliance, is not far-right/ fascist party but a centre-right party?
Ven at 8.57 am
Whatever he’s saying the Brothers of Italy have resuscitated fascist traditions. See:
https://theconversation.com/giorgia-meloni-and-the-return-of-fascism-how-italy-got-here-190866
“Meloni can gaslight the public by making fascist assertions while claiming fascism no longer exists. Importantly, those who warn that fascism is making a comeback are derided as irrational.
This is all exemplified in the dog whistle references to Mussolini that have characterised the 2022 election campaign. Both the League and Brothers of Italy have deployed campaign slogans first used in the fascist era. The latter has even kept the tricolour flame logo used by its predecessors, the neo-fascist MSI.”
I don’t know what it is about Israeli political culture that everyone, Arab and Jew, left and right, is determined to constantly split into small splinter parties rather than united under a broader banner, despite the incentive their system has to NOT be splitters. It’s a rich irony that one of the worst “Judean People’s Front vs People’s Front of Judea” problems in the world is in the actual country that corresponds to biblical Judea…. and we thought the ALP/DLP split was bad here.
I mean, take this one paragraph from the Wiki article about the election:
On 10 July, Blue and White and New Hope formed a joint list known as Blue and White – The New Hope, which excluded Derekh Eretz, who ran as part of New Hope in 2021.[30][31] On 14 August, the list was joined by former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, as well as Yamina MKs Matan Kahana and Shirly Pinto, and was subsequently renamed the National Unity Party.
None of these people has ever taken even one class on “building a consistent brand”.
I think everyone predicted the anti-Netanyahu coalition was too unstable to last but seriously some of those people need their heads read since they really ought to have been asking themselves “what’s worse, this minor issue I’m upset about or NETANYAHU GETTING BACK IN” on basically every issue, but there it is.
An excellent article from the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, dissects the problem of Jewish-Arab relations blocking a return to left-of-centre government in Israel.
The best takes from the piece, by Noa Landau and Hanin Majadli, are:
“The religious right-wing, messianic and racist bloc is more united than ever, while in the opposition bloc there are still greater disparities than similarities.”
“The argument that the center-left is currently dependent upon the vote of the Arabs isn’t just a right-wing scare campaign but rather the reality, even if it is based simply on a common interest rather than common ideology.”
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/2022-11-02/ty-article/.premium/israel-needs-a-revolution-in-jewish-arab-relations/00000184-35ac-d636-a9ed-fdbd4d680000
“Sir Henry Parkes says:
Thursday, November 3, 2022 at 4:10 pm
An excellent article from the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, dissects the problem of Jewish-Arab relations blocking a return to left-of-centre government in Israel.
The best takes from the piece, by Noa Landau and Hanin Majadli, are:
“The religious right-wing, messianic and racist bloc is more united than ever, while in the opposition bloc there are still greater disparities than similarities.””
Unity is a key point in all electoral systems, but especially where voting is not compulsory, and there is a FPTP or proportional system. Interestingly, it is true that the Progressive side of politics tends to be more fragmented than the Neoliberal-Conservative side of politics. So, Progressives must unite. Hopefully, this will be understood by the British progressives at their next general election, as I am sure will be understood by the US Democrats at their imminent mid-term election.
Ven
“Are you saying that Italian PM Meloni’s party . . . is not far-right/ fascist party but a centre-right party?”
You just made my point perfectly!
Reading your sentence, you confirm that for many commentators – yourself included – there is nothing between ‘centre-right’ and ‘far right’, i.e. there is no iteration called ‘right wing’ like there is called ‘left wing’ (in addition to ‘centre-left’ and ‘far left’).
Why can’t Party X or Politician X, be right wing if he’s in between ‘centre-right’ and ‘far right’?
Is it not that for many commentators they disdain such parties / persons so much that it makes them feel better to call right-wingers ‘far right’ as it’s more derogatory and puts them more outside the mainstream in their view?
None of which means that there aren’t also parties and politicians that ARE ‘far right’, the same as there are parties and politicians that are ‘far left’.
Though as Alpo says, what do all these labels mean these days anyway? I suppose they help give a broad view in another country to the one I’m native in, so are useful only if used consistently and based on actuality rather than a media outlet’s specific bias.