To Australians, the Israeli voting system may seem odd. All of Israel is one voting electorate, and citizens entering the voting booth pick only one party. Their votes are tallied, disqualified votes removed, and then divided by 120 – the number of members in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset.
A party needs to win at least four seats, or 3.25% of the legal votes, to enter the Knesset. Each party presents a list of candidates prior to the election campaign, and if a party wins, for example, 10 seats in the Knesset, the first 10 people on its list are elected. Primaries or internal committees determine the candidates on the list, and their order.
The current electoral system is a result of numerous changes over the past decades, most of which were designed to reduce the power of small parties.
Governing Israel is all about coalitions, because no single party has ever won a Knesset majority.
Yet Israeli politics is also traditionally dominated by two or three major parties – mostly right-wing Likud versus a centre-left party (such as Labor, Kadima, and today Yesh Atid) – so in the past, parties with one or two seats were courted by both sides to join their coalition, often leading to exaggerated demands, and even personal corruption.
Which leads us to the main characteristic of Israeli voting patterns since the 1980s – a deadlock between the Likud and “the rest”.
The Likud has been the biggest party in the Knesset for most of the past few decades, and certainly since Likud leader Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu won the 2009 election. Yet, Likud has always needed religious and right-wing parties, and sometimes centrist ones, to assemble the required 61-plus MKs required for a coalition government.
Read the article by Ran Porat on the Monash University LENS.