It's amazing he's survived in politics for this long.

corruption charges before, can he do it again? Who knows, but it SHOULD damage his standing in voter eyes as the run up to the new election. Question is, who will benefit from his party decline? Chances are it would be Likud or The Jewish Home party.

This could also lead to further splintering of the Knesset. Since the late 90's the Knesset has become more and more fragmented, with no party winning more than 39 seats.

I am starting to think that the best hope is that Labor (which has unified with Livini) wins the most seats, then forms a grand coalition with Likud (if they split with Jewish home after the election, which I think is likely), Meretz, Yesh Atid, and Kahlon's new party. This would lock out the far right parties like Yisrael Beiteinu, the religious parties.

It would hinge greatly on Likud breaking with Jewish Home, and Bibi's willingness to join a grand coalition, in which he is not the PM.

Given how things currently are in Israel, I am no longer sure there is any other way the next government will be led by Labor.

Knesset Jeremy Poll of Polls – Weekly Average #5: Labor-Livni 23.6, Likud 23.2, Bayit Yehudi 16.0, Yesh Atid 9.1, Koolanu 9.0, UTJ 7.5

1st 23.6 (23.2) [21] Labor+Livni
2nd 23.2 (22.6) [18] Likud
3rd 16.0 (15.7) [11] Bayit Yehudi
4th 09.1 (09.5) [19] Yesh Atid
5th 09.0 (08.8) [–] Koolanu
6th 07.5 (06.8) [07] Yahadut Hatorah/UTJ
7th 06.7 (08.0) [13] Yisrael Beitenu
8th 06.5 (06.5) [06] Meretz
9th 05.8 (05.3) [10] Shas
10th 3.3 (03.6) [02] Ha’am Itanu (Yishai+Chetboun)
11th 11.0 (10.7) [11] Hadash, Ra’am-Ta’al & Balad (not all polls have them united)
12th 00.1 (00.0) [02] Kadima

http://knessetjeremy.com/category/knesset/polls/

The above is a great site that tracks the election polling data religiously (no pun intended).

appears to be the key question.

Labor+livni+kulanu+yesh atid?

would the Labor + Livini get? 23-25? Not even half of what is needed for a coalition.

Labor+Livni/Yesh Atid/Meretz and try to get one or more of the religious parties.

that the religious parties may put a kink in to peace negotiations. I wish there was a way to get a coalition that would work, without them or likud (IE a center-left secular coalition)

61 is tough to get to - impossible without at least one of the religious parties.

Now that is becoming really interesting ......

Arab-Jewish party Hadash votes in favor of forming unified Arab list

Arab-Jewish party votes in favor of continued negotiations with Arab parties, welcomes new member: Former Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg.

By Jack Khoury

The Hadash party council approved by a large majority on Saturday the continuation of talks to form a unified list with other Arab parties in the coming elections.

The heated five-hour debate saw those who support chairman Mohammed Barakeh's stance in favor of the unified list, which he said would ensure the Arab sector is adequately represented, face off with those who support the party's secretary general, who opposes the move, and believes in the need for cooperation with Israeli society and democratic Jewish elements.

The council voted in favor of pursuing a unified list, under the conditions that Jewish-Arab cooperation would be given a place in the new list, that women would be represented, and that the Hadash agenda would be accepted.

Should the talks fail, the council agreed that Hadash would either seek a joint ticket with United Arab List or would run on its own.

The unification with the Arab parties is considered to be a necessity, not a choice, by Hadash members, who are concerned the raised election threshold will keep them out of the Knesset. Hadash is also concerned the Arab sector would blame the party for the talks' failure, and would punish them in the coming elections.

However, the talks between the Arab parties have not yet reached any conclusion. A clearer picture will emerge only after the parties elect their nominees for the Knesset mid-January.

The star of Saturday's meeting was former Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg, who attended the meeting as a member for the first time. Hadash Chairman Barakeh's announcement of Burg's membership was warmly received by the council.

Burg said he has no intention of running for the Knesset, and stressed his objection to a unified list with a nationalistic agenda.

"Politically, I left the Jewish national arena because it turned nationalistic," Burg said, and added he does not intend to support another form of nationalism.

Source: http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel-election-2015/.premium-1.635201

Wonder if they have a "surplus vote agreement" with any other parties?

seems quite dodgy really - it effectively allocates a preference that a voter has no control over.

It comes into play when your party wins, say, enough votes to entitle you to 9.5 mandates(seats). Obviously, you don't get to hold half a seat, so where do the extra votes go?

In a surplus vote pact, you can arrange for them to go to another party you are in some sort of agreement.

For example, in the last Israeli election, Meretz, the left-of-center peace party, had such an agreement with Tzipi Livni's party.

It would probably be better if they were to switch to a preference system(as the Irish Republic has for their elections)in which voters get several preferences, and second, third, and fourth preferences are distributed to various other parties or candidates after first-preference votes are counted.

This makes minor parties more viable and probably increases the potential for cooperation among different parties.

the way the Dhont method works is quite straightforward. The number of votes a party list receives is divided by 1, then 2, then 3, etc. This gives a series of values. If there are 120 available seats, then the highest 120 values will result in the allocation of a seat.

Therefore there is no set quota as such. The amount of votes required to win a seat will be less where there are many disparate parties and therefore a lot of spent ballots for party lists that fail to make quota. If votes opt for fewer parties then the quota will be higher.

Have a look at the example on wikipedia (the table):-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Hondt_method

Party A gets half the seats (four) even though it gets less than half the votes (100,000 out of 230,000 total).

However, even if all the people who voted for Party D voted for Party C instead, Party C would still fail to make quota for two seats (25,000 is less than 26,666). The result would be unchanged.

Assume that all of the voters for Parties B,C and D vote for a single list. That party would have 130,000 votes to Party A's 100,000.

Party A's Dhont values would be unchanged. The new party list would have values of 130,000, 65,000, 43,333, 32,500, 26,000.

In that case, the combined party would take a seat away from Party A, but only just (26,000 to 25,000). There would be five seats for the new party and three for Party A. This is not a very fair example because the number of seats is so low, and the relative proportion of votes needed to make quota so high, and therefore spent ballots are going to be high as a proportion of the whole. If you decreased the number of seats to three you would have even more wasted ballots. In an electoral system with more seats (such as Israel's 120) and correspondingly lower quotas the disadvantage for smaller parties is less (which is why Israel has instituted artificial quotas to stop fringe parties from getting in).

This is why PR-STV is more suitable for Ireland and also senate elections in Australia, where there are only a handful of seats up for grabs for any one constituency (six, in the case of Australian senate elections). If there are only six seats then there is the potential for a lot of exhausted preferences unless STV is used.

Polls for Hadash have jumped up since he made the announcement ....they are almost on an equal footing with Meretz now .

Predictions of a possible 15 seats for a joint single slate are being made across the Leftist camp ,
see : http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/arab-voters-and-the-israeli-camp/


Its to early to say who they will share surplus votes with ...that will come after their primaries.

Do you see that as a possibility this time around?

It's hard to see them electing ANY MK's(members of the Knesset)with poll numbers like that.

as is Hatnuah.

because they are still being listed as options in the polls.

and he is running around trying to get one of the others to take him on .

..they are being listed as 0 on the most recent ....anyhow a party with 3 seats or less would not pass the election threshold .

Labor/Livni + Yesh+ Koolanu(a new party that calls itself "centrist" and says it favors "egalitarian economics"+Meretz+Shas(a religious party that's participated in Labor-led coalitions in the past)

23+9+9+6+6=52.

If they could at least make a "confidence and supply" arrangement with some of the Arab parties, something could be done.

It's also possible that, if Beitenyu collapses, at least some of the support it took last time could go to center parties, since not all of the Russian immigrants are total right-wing extremists and a lot of them have depended on the social welfare system.

" centrist " they are as " centrist " as Bibi ......who BTW likes to call himself a Centralist .

Not a chance ....ref : " If they could at least make a "confidence and supply" arrangement with some of the Arab parties, something could be done. "

At least not with Yesh Atid or Koolanu........I seriously doubt Avoda would either ...Meretz would .

Latest from yesterday :

69 [61] Right-Religious-Kahlon (Parties that have not ruled out a BB coalition)

51 [59] Center-Left-Arab (Parties that have ruled out a BB coalition)

Who is most suited to be PM?
49% Netanyahu, 33% Herzog

http://knessetjeremy.com/2015/01/05/telesekerchannel-1-poll-likud-25-labor-24-bayit-yehudi-15-yesh-atid-9-koolanu-8-utj-8/

Meretz will NEVER join a Gov that includes Likud .

Yesh Atid has already stated that they will not join a right-wing coalition, see :

Yesh Atid rules out joining right-wing coalition

MK Ofer Shelah also says there will be no joint ticket with Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu.

Source: http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.635186

So something might be cobbled together there.

has splintered with Eli Yishai breaking away to form a new party

Just pointing out that the last time Meretz was in a governing coalition those religious parties were also a part of it.

Some days, it seems like everybody in the country has to have her or his own party to lead.

" Some days, it seems like everybody in the country has to have her or his own party to lead."

Aint that the truth .

Israel election updates / Feiglin to quit Likud, start new party

http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel-election-2015/1.635342

from what I can see of that article it says that Yesh Atid willnot join a Bibi led coalition. It says nothing about a grand coalition, led by Labor, that would include Likud, in order to freeze out parties like Jewish home, yisrael beiteinu and the ultra-orthodox paries.

....such a thing does not exist except in your mind .

See my post # 19 .