A full 68 hours after the polling stations closed and exit polls predicted a surge for Likud and its right-wing bloc, the Central Elections Committee on Thursday confirmed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party as the largest after Monday’s general election, with final results giving it 36 seats to rival Blue and White’s 33.
The full results, published by the committee after delays in checking a number of polling stations and ballot boxes, also confirmed, however, that the right-wing bloc of parties supporting Netanyahu had won 58 seats, three short of a majority needed to form a coalition.
While a total of 30 parties ran in the election — the third in a year — the final results gave seats to only eight, the lowest number to enter the Knesset in Israel’s history. Of the 4,612,297 Israelis who voted, over 56 percent voted for just two parties — Likud and Blue and White, which collectively received 2,566,272 individual ballots.
For now, with all of the votes counted, checked and rechecked, Netanyahu’s Likud party finished out front with 29.48% to win 36 seats in the Knesset, and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White gained 33 seats with 26.59% of the ballots. The results represent a three-seat increase for Likud since the April 2019 election, while Blue and White keeps the same number of MKs.
Likud’s 36 seats match the party’s result in the April 2019 national vote, which was its best since the 2003 election (when it won 38 seats under Ariel Sharon), and its best under Netanyahu.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent a great deal of time beyond the Green Line campaigning ahead of Monday’s election, seeking to remind locals of all he has done and will continue to do to further expand and entrench their presence there. On Monday, settlers returned the favor, giving the premier’s Likud party more support than any other faction among Israelis in the West Bank.
Of the roughly 460,000 settlers, 29.7 percent of voters cast their ballots for Likud — an astounding jump of 7.3 percentage points over the September election. Likud has been the most popular party beyond the Green Line in the past, but that has generally been the case when the national religious parties were split. Moreover, the 6.9 point gap in support between Netanyahu’s party and the second most popular one, Yamina, is the largest it’s been in decades.
The increase in support was most evident in city-settlements that were already Likud strongholds, such as Ma’ale Adumim and Ariel, the 3rd- and 4th-largest settlements, with some 40,000 and 20,000 residents, respectively. In Ma’ale Adumim, Likud climbed from 49% of the vote in September to 59% of the vote in April, and in Ariel, it jumped from 44% to 52% of the vote.
In national religious establishment settlements known for supporting Yamina or its predecessor, the Jewish Home Likud also managed to gain ground, climbing from 23% of the vote in Efrat last September to 34% of the vote this week, with Yamina dropping from 60% to 53% support. Similar numbers were registered in Ofra, where Likud rose from 17% of the vote in the last election to 29%, while Yamina dropped from 68% to 64% in the national religious heartland.
Even in the ultra-Orthodox city-settlements of Modiin Illit and Beitar Illit, where locals overwhelmingly support the Shas and United Torah Judaism parties, Likud saw its totals rise on Monday compared to previous elections. In the former settlement of 74,000, Likud was the only non-Haredi party that received more than one percent of the vote. That was also the case in Beitar Illit, where 4.2% of thee 21,339 ballots cast were stuffed with Likud slips.
In towns where locals typically hold more centrist views, both near the Green Line and in the Jordan Valley, Likud enjoyed slight gains as well. The party climbed by six points (to 38% of the vote) and by three points (to 25% of the vote) in the Blue and White bastions of Har Adar and Alfei Menashe, respectively.
While in the rest of the country, Likud’s jump from 32 seats in September to 36 on Monday came at the expense of parties on both sides of the political spectrum, beyond the Green Line, Netanyahu’s gains appeared to more significantly affect the national religious establishment party Yamina and the far-right Otzma Yehudit.
The former saw its support at the polls in the settlements drop from 24.4% in September to 22.8% this week. Otzma Yehudit, meanwhile, plummeted from 6.96% of vote in the last election to just 1.6% on Monday.
Otzma Yehudit, which was largely understood as having next to no chance of crossing the electoral threshold on Monday saw its support in the most hard-line settlements such as Yitzhar and Bat Ayin nosedive. In Yitzhar, all other right-wing parties gained at the extremist slate’s expense, while in Bat Ayin, Likud skyrocketed by over 20 points to become the most popular party in the settlement.
No comments:
Post a Comment