Here’s an update: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/.premium-israel-election-exit-polls-netanyahu-gantz-1.7854652
Per exit polling, Netanyahu’s right-wing block has lost seats since the last election, if I’m reading it right. The moderate/liberal “Blue and White” party will have more than Likud, with no one having a majority.
Am I reading this right, and if so, what does this mean? Also, feel free to talk about the election in general in this thread.
You’re reading it right, but it’s what the exit polls show, not an official result. We will know more soon.
Yeah, we’ve been burned too many times to say *anything *before we get actual results.
Even assuming the results DO hold, it’s unclear who would be prime minister. If Likud can get enough allies together, they can still build a coalition, but that’s looking less and less likely. Lieberman (the leader of a smaller party called Israel Beitanu) is apparently trying to broker a centrist alliance between Likud and Blue White, and he might end up with enough votes to force the issue… he’s stated that his main goal is to push the religious parties out of any coalition that forms.
How long until the official counts start coming in?
Hard to overstate the relevance of this point iiandyiii.
This is the second election of the year. Netanyahu was generally expected to be able to form a coalition government out of the first results. He couldn’t. That’s why they held this election. Welcome to the joys of parliamentary systems with proportional representation. Israel’s system even has a relatively low threshold for small parties to win seats in the Knesset; no party has ever won a majority of seats. The election results are just a starting point for the process of trying to form a government. Nothing says anyone, let alone Netanyahu, will succeed at forming a government after this election either.
Why are the results taking so long? When will they be announced?
All federal and provincial elections in Canada are paper ballots, hand counted. They don’t take several days to count. I can only imagine they need to be more careful in Israel because of the importance of minor party votes.
But for the sake of discussion assume Haaretz’s current estimates … what would a Kahol Lavan led coalition potentially look like and how do they get there? What are the dynamics of cobbling together the disparate other players? At most recent numbers Kahol Lavan + Joint Alliance +Democratic Union + Labor (assuming all in on the coexisting together unity deal) still come up short. Would Yisrael Beiteinu be able to coexist in such a coalition? What would be the price? Would just being rid of Bibi be enough?
Educate us please! We be ignorant! Well me anyway …
Canada (like the US and the UK) uses the first-past-the-post system, which is quick to count because the choice a voter can express is very limited and each ballot contains relatively little information. Moreover some ballots will, in practice, have much greater bearing on the overall outcome than others and, if desired, counting procedures can prioritise the processing of these ballots, resulting in an even quicker answer to the question “which party has won?”
With at least some proportional representation systems voters can express much more sophisticated choices and each individual ballot contains much more information. Different items of information on the ballot may be relevant at different points in the process, so ballots may need to be examined more than once. And in general all ballots will have more nearly equal significance to the outcome, so there is less opportunity to prioritise the processing of the ballots that are more likely to determine the overall outcome.
Remember that in Israel, even after the official results are announced, it will take another 30 days before we know who won. 
(In case you don’t know, the process is as follows:
The president of the country is a minor, ceremonial office, except for one crucial function, which he will carry out this week: he officially meets with each party after the election and asks them to recommend one person who they wish to see as the next Prime Minister (i.e either Bibi, or Gantz).
A few days later, the president makes his decision, and officially declares that he will “impose the duty” of creating a government on Bibi, or on Gantz.
Bibi or Gantz than has 30 days to negotiate with all the other parties and try to convince them to join the new government, with him as the big boss.
Last April, for the first time in Israeli history, Bibi failed in those negotiations, and so new elections were called.)
Note that tradition demands that the President offer the job to the person receiving the largest number of recommendations, even though he has no actual legal obligation to do so. President Rivlin tends to do things by the book.
That said, being tasked with assembling the government does not mean you’ll succeed in securing 61 votes, as Bibi found out last fall. The pundits are saying that in fact, it would be better for either Bibi or Gantz not to receive the recommendations first, because it would put either of them in a much better negotiating position after the other guy fails.
Let’s just say, there’s reason the term “Mexican Standoff” has entered the Israeli lexicon this morning.
Alessan, what are your feelings on Ayman Odeh? What is the broader Israeli opinion, in your understanding? Is there any chance of Blue and White forming an alliance with the Joint List? If not, why is this anathema?
The reasons exist, but they’re moot at this time. B&W plus all the Left parties plus the Arabs don’t have a majority. They need Lieberman. And while Lieberman is allied with the left on religious/secular issues, he and his party are hard right on security issues. It’s hard to imagine Lieberman and the left in the same coalition, and virtually inconceivable that he could join with the Arab List.
What Lieberman wants (or at least claims to want) is a unity government with B&W and Likud. One problem here that the Likud won’t join with anyone who won’t support immunizing Bibi from criminal charges, which B&W say is a non-starter for them.
The big problem with Joint List is that you’ve got both secular, atheist Arabs who want what’s best for Arabs living in Israel, and you’ve got Islamists who quite literally don’t think Israel should exist, and everything in between. Even within the union, that’s led to issues in the past - many in Odeh’s party, Hadash, worried that this joint list party wouldn’t have as firm a stance on, say, gender equality.
Long term, my biggest hope is that the religious right and Islamist parties both fade away, the secular Arabs can join with the secular Left, and together they can finally come up with a peaceful resolution to the whole shebang.
Right now, though, I think a centrist coalition led by Blue White, with Israel Beitanu and Likud, is the best way to move forward without Bibi (I hope Blue White sticks to their guns and demands he leaves) and without the religious parties.
Looks like Netanyahu will get to build a coalition after all. Or at least, try – Israeli media is reporting that the president picked him to build a government, but we will see if he can. Blue White pledged that they won’t join a government led by Netanyahu, and Israel Beitanu has said they won’t joint with the religious right. If both of those pledges hold true (and we all know what politician pledges are worth), then I don’t see how Netanyahu has a better shot success than he did last time.
A higher up in Blue White says, (my own translation here), “This negotiation [for the creation of a Center coalition with Blue White, Israel Beitanu, and Likud] is entirely Bibi’s farce; as soon as he realized that we would not let him be prime minister, he moved on to the next election cycle. He’s just trying to pass the blame on to us.”
Assuming Bibi fails again to build a ruling majority - does Benny get a chance to try or another round of elections?
Bibi has 28 days to form a government; the President may extend the period by up to 14 days, but probably won’t. After that, the President can offer the job to someone else - namely, to Gantz, as the person with the second-largest number of recommendations - who in turn has 28 days of his own (no extensions). After that, it gets weird: the President makes an open casting call to the Knesset, which means that *anyone *who can get 61 signatures gets the job. If no-one can do that in 21 days, new elections are called.