Frustrating as hell. Seems like Netanyahu wins even when he loses. Why is Israeli politics so screwy?
You’re asking us 
about why politics is so screwy? This oughta be good.
Ahh—elections are fun!!! We love 'em. that’s why we have so many.
And it usually only takes a month or two after election day to find out who won.
Actually, this time, it’s apparently not gonna take so long, so it won’t be as much fun
As of right now, 8 a.m. with 75% of the vote counted, it looks like things are just as predicted. Netanyahu has his slim majority.
Ooops!!!
It’s now 9:30 am, 89% of the votes counted…and Netanyahu just lost his slim majority.
WHOOPIE!!! The fun begins!!!
See ya’ll in a month or two… 
I’ve never had a tendency for stress migraines. Until now
And despite his various legal woes. Like Trump, he seems to have enough of a hardcore base to carry on doing what he does regardless.
Netanyahu is bouyed by 1) the fact that voters vote for a party slate and not for an individual candidate, 2) the widespread perception that “they all do it”, and 3) the fact that he only needs about 25% of the vote to “win” under the coalition system.
The last is particularly significant, in that suppose someone who was ideologically in line with Likud decided they couldn’t stomach Netanyahu’s corruption and would vote for another party. They would undoubtedly vote for another party which is close to Likud ideologically, and that other party would then join Netanyahu’s coalition.
On another note, Netanyahu made an effort to reach out to Arab voters this election. (The big selling point is apparantly that if you join the winning team you’ll actually get some political spoils.) Interesting to see how successful that was.
It’s a good object lesson to all those who lament the inherent unfairness of America’s ‘two party system’.
Yeah, it sucks to have a limited choice menu of chicken or beef. But be careful what you wish for.
Further to this theme, one surprise winner in this election is the Islamist party which broke off from the combined Arab list, and seems to have won 5 seats. (The threshold is 4 seats, and it was unclear if they would make it.)
The thing is that the leader of this party has said that - in marked contrast to the other Arab parties - he is open to sitting in a coalition with Netanyahu. But that’s is not so simple, because even if he’s willing to join a coalition with Netanyahu, that may not apply to some of the other right-wing parties (and vice versa).
Based on the numbers as they currently stand, it will be very tough for Netanyahu - or anyone else - to put together a coalition.
As Groucho Marx almost said:
I’d never be a member of a coalition who’d have me!
I’d sooner bet that some of Netanyahu’s other co-coalitionists would walk out if the Islamist party was invited in. So bringing them in would be a net loss of seats for the coalition. These are the sorts of “Don’t laugh; you’re next!” suicide pacts that coalition politics creates. Not an obviously good way to govern a badly divided populace.
I’d suggest the thread title is not specific enough. How about “Israeli Election - March 2021”?
Joking/not joking…
This. Sometimes I wish that we in America had a viable third choice. But then I think of things like this (or Italy’s famously-dysfunctional system), and realize that things could be worse.
Is the Israeli system of government similar to the British Parliament system?
If so, do the British ever have this problem?
Not sure about the British but Canada has had its share.
Israel uses a proportional representation system as I understand it with party lists:
Canada and the UK are still first past the post, so as long as the leading party is hated the least it’s relatively easy to win a majority of the seats without achieving a majority vote. In the 2015 election, the Liberals took 54% of the seats with 39.5% of the popular vote.
Italy has the same issue as Israel with small parties fragmenting parliament.
Each constituency in the UK is FPTP, which trends towards a two-horse race, but regional/national differences within the UK result in several minor parties that take seats in constituencies where the two top horses aren’t the two main parties in the UK as a whole, and the some of the political and ideological friction surrounding Northern Irish parties creates the potential for issues. The 2017 election nearly resulted in a deadlock.
Basically the underlying issue is that Sinn Fein, the main Irish Nationalist party in Northern Ireland, runs candidates (and wins their modest share of seats) but refuses to take their seats in UK parliament because they refuse to acknowledge that the UK has sovereignty over them. Additionally, during the peace process following the Troubles, Sinn Fein got most of the other UK parties to agree never to form a coalition between British mainland parties and Irish parties. The party that did not agree to this was the DUP, the main Irish Unionist party. So the situation for a while was that Sinn Fein didn’t agree to form a government with anyone, and everyone else agreed not to form a government with the DUP (even though the DUP had no problem with forming a government with a British party).
Then the Conservatives narrowly missed taking a majority in 2017. And every party other than the DUP refused to form a coalition with the Conservatives due to their Brexit stance. So the Conservatives formed a confidence-and-supply agreement with the DUP which some argue broke the agreement they had made with Sinn Fein.
Perhaps someone more familiar with the Israeli system can explain this:
Apparently the President has tasked Netanyahu with forming a government. So he gets X number of days to cobble together a coalition. What is the significance of this? Are the leaders of all parties banned from discussing potential coalitions with anyone other than Netanyahu? I would be surprised if this is the case, and if it’s not, then what’s to stop anyone else who thinks they might be able to form a coalition from discussing it with potential partners even as Netanyahu goes about doing the same thing with presidential imprimatur?
IOW, what practical difference is there in who the Israeli President decides to give first shot at forming a government?
AFAIK basically while the ball is in Netanyahu’s court no one else can form a coalition. This gives the President a lot of influence of course in ambiguous situations like this. Theoretically, other parties can form a pact to not join Likud and wait until they are able to form a coalition themselves. However for some of the parties trying to position themselves as kingmakers it essentially means that making a deal with Netanyahu now is a better guarantee than with Yesh Atid (or another party) later. For one thing, if you imagine yourself as a marginal party that could either go into coalition with a Likud government or a non-Likud government, you could try to hold out, and then Likud could manage to form a government without you and you could get nothing. Or you could try to hold out for a promise from Yesh Atid, but they (or someone else in the coalition) might try to pressure you into compromising further when it comes time to actually form a government.
The potential is always there for the president to favor one party, but I think in this case Likud was the party to pick. They still won more seats than any individual party by far and have had a lot of different groups saying they’re open to going into coalition with them. It’s still going to be a mess for them (or anyone else) to figure out how to form a government with some slice of the orthodox, jewish nationalist, arab nationalist, islamist and liberal parties but they probably have the best shot.