Elections in Israel: The Day After

The big picture first. Likud and the far-right coalition lost significant support and cannot form a government right now. The key number in Israel is 61 seats; they were in the mid-sixties, and now they are down to 53. This makes it impossible for the far-right bloc to form a government. Yashar’s coalition under Gady Eisenkot stands at 47 seats, again not enough to form a government. The Arab lists are at 19 seats. Unlike previous Israeli elections, where religious parties such as Shas were the kingmakers, Arab parties hold the key to any government that could emerge from this.

So yesterday the day started with claims of fraud. And I want you to understand why. This society is incredibly divided, though it voted itself away from the far right and towards some sanity yesterday. So many of these claims were pre-butting the results. We see this in the US often, and I have no doubt some shenanigans did happen. The question is how systemic the shenanigans were. I have yet to see a national election, insert country here, without shenanigans. In fact, I expect some next week, because we have them too. So let me give you a couple of examples of the claims:

Push News: The “United” party has appealed to the Election Committee, claiming that representatives of the Likud party are stationed inside polling stations, monitoring voters and reporting on them using an…