Israel Elections: What will determine the election results?

This article by Susan Hattis Rolef is published in the Jerusalem Post:

The approaching elections are the second time in the electoral history of the State of Israel that the elections will be decided not only on the basis of the achievements of the lists that actually pass the electoral qualifying threshold (which today stand at 3.25%), but on the basis of the votes given to the lists that fail to cross it, and are consequently considered “lost votes.”

In the 1992 elections, so it has been argued, one of the main causes for the Yitzhak Rabin’s victory was that 65,185 right-wing votes were lost because four small right-wing lists did not pass the 1.5% qualifying threshold that prevailed at the time.

This analysis is not completely accurate, because even if the “lost votes” would have been counted as part of the right-wing bloc, Rabin’s Labor Party still had a majority, for the simple reason that Shas decided to join his coalition. 

Read the full article here.