The Right in Israel can expect 76 seats, next time around.

By Ted Belman

Since I first pointed out that The Bibi Camp got 49.5% of the vote, yet 54% of the seats, everyone has been writing about it.

Today TOI published an article in which they explored the turnout:

The first thing to note is that overall turnout actually went up, from 67% in 2021 to 71%. Irrespective of everything else, it is quite remarkable that the Israeli public’s response to election after election is actually to go to vote in greater numbers.

What is more significant, though, is who went to vote in greater numbers, and who did not. Center- and left-leaning cities in the center of the country – such as Tel Aviv, Herzliya, Kfar Saba, Hod Hasharon and Raanana – saw turnout figures virtually unchanged from 2021. In contrast, cities that lean rightward, such as Beersheba, Jerusalem, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Tiberias, Kiryat Gat and Afula, all saw turnout rates increase by between three and seven percentage points.

The four percentage point increase in turnout, therefore, came largely from areas that lean right.

Looking at the raw vote figures further illustrates this point. In 2021, 2.22 million Israelis cast their votes for parties opposed to Netanyahu, as opposed to 2.13 million for pro-Netanyahu parties. This time, while the non-Bibi bloc grew its vote by 5 percent, to 2.33 million, the Netanyahu bloc grew by 11 percent, to 2.36 million. All in all, Netanyahu added 230,000 votes to his bloc from the previous round, while the other side added half as many.

Percentage change in votes won, 2021 vs 2022

What happened is even clearer when we break down the blocs into their component parts:

On the right, the biggest shift was an unprecedented turnout among supporters of Haredi parties, who managed to increase their number of voters by 19 percent. The gain among the non-Haredi right (Likud, Religious Zionism and Jewish Home) was a more modest, but nonetheless significant, 8 percent.

In contrast, the Zionist center and left (Yesh Atid, National Unity, Labor and Meretz) saw a one percent decrease in their number of voters despite the enlarged electorate, showing how their attempts to motivate and mobilize their voters fell short.

After weeks of talk about Arab turnout, in the end the Arab citizens turned out in large numbers, with the vote for Arab parties increasing by 35 percent. (Thanks to Report: ‘Millions’ of Jewish American Dollars Paid to Raise Percent of Arab Vote)

This, however, was ultimately unable to make up for the drop-off among the center-left.

In total, Netanyahu’s bloc very narrowly “won” the “popular vote” (a heavily disputed and questionable concept in this context, but interesting nonetheless) for the first time since April 2019.

One the other hand the popular Jewish vote was not split.

“non-Bibi bloc grew its vote by 5 percent, to 2.33 million, the Netanyahu bloc grew by 11 percent, to 2.36 million. All in all, Netanyahu added 230,000 votes to his bloc from the previous round, while the other side added half as many.”

If you remove the Arab parties from the turn out, then the Bibi Camp got 49.5% of the vote and the Jewish Anti-Bibi Camp got about 40% of the vote. As I said before that’s a blow out. But once Bibi is gone, say in 4 years, the Right Camp will be even bigger because it will include Liberman’s, Yisrael Beitenu, (6 seats) and maybe half of Saar/Gantz’s 12 seats.

An article published today by INN put it this way:

The number of people who voted for Jewish parties (!) is 4,123,758; Of these, 2,303,964 voted for right-wing, conservative parties, and 1,819,794 for left-wing and liberal and even centrist parties (we included Gantz, Sa’ar, Lapid, Liberman, Michaeli, Galon. some of whose voters have right-wing opinions, it is just that they hate Bibi).

If we ignore the complicated calculations of the surplus vote agreements and the like and divide these numbers into 120 Jewish seats (each seat numbering 34,364 votes) the conclusion is simple: 67 seats for the bloc of faith-based parties and 53 seats for the bloc that is not faith-based.

That’s the biggest take away of all from these numbers.