Netanyahu Slips in Polls Days Before Israeli Elections

Netanyahu Slips in Polls Days Before Israeli Elections Labor Party leader Herzog benefits from perception that Prime Minister is not focused on economy

TEL AVIV—Less than a week before Israel’s general elections, the party of incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu has begun to fall behind an opponent who promises to restart talks with Palestinians and smooth the prime minister’s notoriously rocky relations with the White House.

Two polls on Wednesday put Isaac Herzog, leader of the dovish Labor Party, slightly ahead and suggest that support for Mr. Netanyahu and his Likud party among working-class Jews has eroded because of their widespread perception that he has focused on nuclear threats from Iran and extremist Muslims at the expense of economic problems.

“He’s talking about something that isn’t relevant—Iran and ISIS,’’ said Avi Biton, owner of a snack bar and a Likud voter in previous elections. “Today my kids don’t have the ability to settle down and buy a house. If they can’t do that, this country has no reason to exist.”

Polls by Israel Army Radio and the daily Haaretz released on Wednesday showed Mr. Herzog’s Zionist Union, a new, center-left alliance of the Labor Party with another political faction, winning 24 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, or parliament, to 21 for Likud party. A survey on Tuesday by Channel 2 television showed Zionist Union picking up 25 seats to Likud’s 21.

The polls show Mr. Netanyahu, who is seeking a fourth term as prime minister, lost support after his speech to Congress last week warning against the terms of a nuclear deal being negotiated between six world powers and Iran.[...] Some retired generals criticized Mr. Netanyahu for alienating Israel’s most important ally.

Yep, they are certainly not like American elections, and that’s because of the “coalitions” that are needed to form a government ... which come from so many different parties!

Here in America, the Founding Fathers put together a system (the Electoral College) that mathematically FORCES a two-party system on us and makes opit impossible to have a multitude of smaller parties.

You can thank the Founding Fathers and their wise choice of the ELECTORAL COLLEGE for what we’re all familiar with today in the two-party system.

Israeli elections confuse the hell out of me.

Short version: There are no districts; everyone in the country votes for a party, not a candidate. Each party gets a number of seats in the Knesset (Parliament) equal to its percentage of the vote.

The worst polls I have seen for Netanyahu show his party, Likud, winning 21 seats and the Zionist Union winning 25. (He may of course do much better.) But you need 61 seats in the Knesset to form a government (the Knesset has a total membership of 120). The only way to do this is to form a coalition with minor parties to reach the magic number of 61.

There are a few centrist parties that are to the right of Zionist Union and to the left of Likud, who could join either one depending on what deals are made, but there are also a number of hard-right parties, to the right of Likud, who would never join with Zionist Union. (There is only one Jewish party to the left of Zionist Union, and they are not likely to do well.) There are also some religious parties, representing the ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are more likely to align with Likud than with Zionist Union. Finally, there are Arab parties who will never join any coalition with either Zionist Union or Likud.

The upshot is that, even if Zionist Union does substantially better than Likud, there are still many more scenarios under which Netanyahu gets to form a coalition than there are for Herzog.

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