On the Israeli general election of 2021: will the deadlock be broken?

The Israeli general election of 23 March 2021, where results were not finalised for another 2 days due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, showed a significant partisan fragmentation that will make breaking the deadlock even harder than last year. This is also the fourth Israeli general election in less than 2 years, with the 23rd Knesset having lasted  one year, the longest of the past three Knessets.

Likud, the main conservative party of Israel, lost 7 seats, bringing it down to 30, despite the collapse of the main opposition coalition of last year's Israeli election, the centrist Blue & White Alliance. It is clear that Benjamin Netanyahu's determination to continue despite pending corruption charges against him and widespread protests against his subpar handling of the coronavirus pandemic in May and August 2020 is tarnishing Likud's reputation amongst conservative Israeli voters, especially those of a more religious (as opposed to secular) outlook, since Likud's loss was primarily Yamina's gain. Yamina, led by known nationalist hardliner Naftali Bennett, more than doubled its seat total to 7, helped by one of its former constituent parties, Jewish Home, withdrawing from the election. The ultranationalist Religious Zionist party, meanwhile, gained 4 seats, giving it 6, a sign that Israel is just as susceptible to Donald Trump style populism as any other democratic nation. Shas, primarily representing Haredi, Mizrahi and Sephardic interests in Israel, stayed on 9 seats but they moved up to third place in the poll, and United Torah Judaism, representing Ashkenazi and Haredi interests whilst not being as socially conservative as Shas, stayed on 7 seats. New Hope managed a surprisingly strong result, winning 6 seats; one of its notable and contextually relevant policies is an eight-year limit for serving Prime Ministers of Israel, and Mr Netanyahu has been Prime Minister of Israel for a total of 15 years (1996-1999 and since 2009) at this time of writing.

The Blue & White Alliance, despite the loss of its main component Yesh Atid, carried on as a party but ended up winning only 8 seats in this Knesset, although this exceeded polling expectations. Yesh Atid on the other hand won 17 seats, more than double that of the beleaguered Blue & White Alliance, and finished second, although this means that the constituent parties of the Blue & White Alliance made a net loss of 8 seats compared to 2020, proving that Benny Gantz' decision to enter into a coalition with Mr Netanyahu, on the proviso he would become Israeli PM this September, was a serious mistake. Yisraeli Beitenu, who endorsed Mr Gantz for Israeli PM but declined to explicitly endorse him this time, remained on 7 seats. The collapse of the Gantz coalition aided a recovery by the Israeli Labour Party, which was believed to be in the long-term on its way out of the Knesset; the Israeli Labour Party increased its seat total to 7, meaning it can breathe a sigh of relief. Meretz, Israel's main green party., gained 2 seats for a total of 6, showing that the small but significant cohort progressive voters who tactically backed the Blue & White Alliance in 2020 in the hope of removing Mr Netanyahu from office have returned to their former allegiances.

The Blue & White Alliance was not the only coalition to fracture before this election was called. Ra'am, particularly popular amongst Bedouin voters of Israel, left the Joint List (a coalition of Arab parties in Israel) and was predicted to be eliminated from the Knesset, but it held on to 4 seats with 3.8% of the vote. The Joint List suffered as a result, losing 5 of its 11 seats, proving how important the gestalt theory is politics involving party-lists, even if the threshold (3.25% in the Knesset's case) is not particularly high. Ra'am was the most socially conservative of the constituent parties of the Joint List and the increasingly progressive stances of the rest was a factor in its departure. No party that did not win enough votes to pass the threshold for entry to the Knesset polled even 1% apiece, and in fact only two of those (New Economic Party and Rapeh only Health) polled more than 0.1%. The wooden spoon in this election went to Human Dignity, who polled just 196 votes (the Democratic Party of Israeli polled an even lower total of 59, but because they withdrew from the election before polling day they are not eligible for the wooden spoon award).

Coronavirus is not impacting election turnout around the world as much as it did last year, but election fatigue was an important factor in this Israeli election, and consequently turnout dropped as much as 4.1% to 67.4%. With the Knesset more fragmented in partisan terms it is in fact even less likely than last year that the deadlock will be broken to the point where the Knesset can manage a full 4-year term, unless Mr Netanyahu resigns from the office of Israeli PM.