Apr 16, 2015

A month has passed since the elections and the dust is starting to settle over the results that shocked the Israeli political system and numerous observers around the world. The findings of a new survey verify the analysis published here in Al-Monitor the day after the elections. True, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu managed to transform a gap of a mandate or two in the polls into an advantage of six seats in the voting booths in two days. But aside from this sweeping victory, nothing else really happened and the balance of electoral power in Israel underwent a minor change in favor of the center-left bloc. The Israeli public did not shift to the right, the inter-bloc balance sheet barely changed and the main power distribution remained as it was. The only thing that did change is that Netanyahu managed to gobble up votes from the Likud’s satellite parties, while Zionist Camp leader Isaac Herzog did not.

The survey was conducted by American pollster Jim Gerstein together with David Eichenbaum, who together comprise the professional staff of the New Majority organization. New Majority endeavored to replace Netanyahu, and the organization became well known during the weeks before the election in Israel mainly via veteran Israeli strategist Eyal Arad. Gerstein is intimately involved in the Democratic Party and is viewed as one of the disciples of veteran American political strategist Stanley Greenberg, who was part of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s professional staff when he overcame Netanyahu in 1999.

Below are some of the more prominent findings of the survey, which polled 1,133 Israelis who voted in the elections (a significant number, considering the size of the Israeli electorate):

1. An enormous number of Israelis, 28%, decided for whom to cast their vote on election day itself, with 15% deciding who to vote for en route to the poll booth and another 13% deciding in the “last days before the elections.” This percentage is anomalous by any criteria: an unprecedented number of Israelis decided who to vote for only days before the elections or on Election Day itself. These fateful days were during Netanyahu’s media blitz, in which he employed his “secret weapons,” telling everyone, “The Arabs are streaming to the poll booths in droves.” He warned against Herzog and Zionist Camp co-leader Tzipi Livni’s post-Zionism and leaned heavily on the security ticket and the rising threats facing the country. For the sake of comparison, in the US presidential elections of 2012, only 3% of the voters made their decision on the last day, and another 6% decided in the last few days, a total of 9%. Of the “last day” deciders, 25% voted for the Likud and only 11% for the Zionist Camp. In total, 62% voted for right-wing parties, 16% for left-wing parties and 21% for centrist parties.

2. The overall voting percentage rose significantly. About 10% of the 2015 voters had not voted in the 2013 elections. Of them, 35% are Arab-Israeli voters, 47% are Jewish right-wing voters and only 17% are center-left voters. This phenomenon is fascinating because while it increased the effectiveness of the “obstructing bloc” against Netanyahu (due to an increase in Arab voters), it also increased Netanyahu’s advantage among the Jewish population. Another conclusion by Gerstein and Eichenbaum was that while the enlarged Jewish electorate in the recent elections has indeed leaned a bit more to the right, it has not become more religious. The characteristics of the “new Jewish voter” are “young, male, Sephardi [of Middle Eastern origin], traditional and of a low education level,” state the survey findings.