Talk:September 2019 Israeli legislative election

Clarification of the how and why

Since clearly this page is under active editing, and I can't wait for said editing to end because I need to go to bed, somebody should make changes to better explain the following:

The elections were not called because Netanyahu failed to form a coalition - not directly. Normally if the PM-designate fails to form a coalition, the President just picks a new MK to give it a try. The elections were called because a majority of the Knesset wanted to prevent the President from doing just that. The Knesset dissolved itself voluntarily; this wasn't an automatic result of the deadline passing. Some news outlets have failed to make that clear. Kimpire (talk) 21:56, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

How do you think it should be worded? IsraeliIdan (talk) 04:30, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Well, I was hoping you guys would handle it before I woke up :p Kimpire (talk) 07:17, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Who voted to dissolve the Knesset?

I have tried to find out who were the 74 who voted in favor, and who were the 45 who voted against dissolving the Knesset (and which Knesset Member did not cast a vote, since 74+45=119), but have not been able to find out. If anybody can find that out, please add to the article. Banana Republic (talk) 14:23, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Its super easy to find out as it was streamed on ALL israeli channels prettu much. The one guy missing is roee fulkman from Kulanu. IsraeliIdan (talk) 14:45, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

A helpful answer is that all MKs from Likud (35), UTJ (8), Shas (8), Kulanu (3 – not Folkman), Yisrael Beiteinu (5), United Right (5) and the Arab parties (10) voted in favour. Blue & White (35), Labor (6) and Meretz (4) all voted against. Number 57 15:15, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I have added that to the article. If you can find a reference for it, please add that to the article. Banana Republic (talk) 15:53, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Opportunity to use infobox_election

So the current situation in the Knesset is that there are only 9 factions (a historic low for Israel). This is important for us, because the upper limit for using infobox_election is 9 parties, a limitation that forced us to use infobox_legislative_election for all previous elections. If the election results do indeed provide 9 parties or below (as the polls currently predict), I think we should discuss perhaps using infobox_election (as seen here https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/2017_German_federal_election) instead of the current infobox, as it provides a lot more information than infobox_legislative_election (for example, it has a picture of the party leader, swing in % and more).

Gibzit (talk) 03:22, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

That sounds like a great idea. David O. Johnson (talk) 03:27, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Sounds like a terrible idea to me. The manual of style expects infoboxes to be small and compact (MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE: "The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose") and a 9-party infobox_election takes up huge amounts of room. It's full of unnecessary detail for an infobox. At Next United Kingdom general election, we recently switched to infobox_legislative_election instead. Bondegezou (talk) 11:09, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

It is a terrible idea and would be inconsistent with all previous Israeli elections. We do not need photos of party leaders – this is not a presidential election. Number 57 11:10, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

We use Infobox_election for parliamentary elections all the time. Additionally, we don't neccisarily need to include all of them. I have made an example---> KingWither (talk) 20:45, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

September 2019 Israeli legislative election

9 May 2019 (2019-17-09)
All 120 seats in the Knesset
Turnout	69.8%
First party Second party Third party   Leader Benny Gantz Benjamin Netanyahu Ayman Odeh Party Blue and White Likud Joint List Seats before 35 38 10 Seats won 33 32 13 Seat change 2 6 3 Popular vote 1,151,214 1,113,617 470,211 Percentage 25.95% 25.10% 10.60%   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader Aryeh Deri Avigdor Lieberman Yaakov Litzman Party Shas Yisrael Beiteinu UTJ Seats before 8 5 8 Seats won 9 8 7 Seat change 1 3 1 Popular vote 330,199 310,154 268,775 Percentage 7.44% 6.99% 6.06%   Seventh party Eighth party Ninth party   Leader Ayelet Shaked Amir Peretz Nitzan Horowitz Party Yamina Labor-Gesher Democratic Union Seats before 6 6 4 Seats won 7 6 5 Seat change 1 1 Popular vote 260,655 212,782 192,495 Percentage 5.87% 4.80% 4.34%
Prime Minister before election Benjamin Netanyahu (interim) Likud Elected Prime Minister No government formed and fresh elections called. [[Netanyahu remains PM in interim|Netanyahu remains PM in interim]]

We've not used them for Israeli elections before, and they move away from what an infobox is meant to be, as per MOS:INFOBOX. Bondegezou (talk) 16:29, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

The reason, as stated above for why we havent used them before, is that there are two many parties to add to one election. India uses them, and they have a huge amount of parties. — Preceding unsigned comment added by KingWither (talk • contribs) 17:27, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

I've just added the last three parties to get a complete infobox.

The result isn't ugly. It 'works'.

Having just 9 parties in the Knesset might be the new normal. With a threshold set at 3,25%, Israel is now very close to other electoral thresholds of PR systems throughout the world. Which, as you know, makes entry into Parliament more expensive.

However, Template:Infobox election is limited to just 9 parties.

All previous Knesset elections, and certainly some elections in the future, will have more lists above the threshold.

Using the template in these cases takes up too much space but deletes key information.

So I would choose not to use it, although the result is better than expected.

More generally, what would be the ideal infobox?

Israeli politics are very sectorial. Almost all parties of the last 70 years fit in just about 4 groups: arab, left-secularist, right-nationalist, orthodox (with possibly another 3 intermediate groups). The leaders' pictures do not matter, unless they vie for Prime ministership. What matters is the sector.

I would:

1) keep the Template:infobox legislative election

2) add above the pictures of the leaders of the horse race (2, but also, 3, 4 or 1), their name and party

3) replace the leaders' column with a constituency (Haredi, Catch-All, Nationalist, Business, etc.) ; then make it sortable alphabetically

Kahlores (talk) 02:35, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

{{Infobox legislative election}} is clearly preferable IMO. {{Infobox election}} is ridiculously big and is not an effective summary of the outcome – in Israeli politics even the small parties matter as governments are often reliant on them to get their majority. We should also be consistent in using the same infobox all the way through the election series. Proposals (2) and (3) are not workable IMO; one of the purposes of the new infobox was to avoid having leaders' images to make it compact; also this is not a presidential election and people are not voting for a specific person. I suspect (3) would end in endless disputes over how to categorise some parties (and some are quite flexible in their ideology). Number 57 13:56, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

I took the time to see what my own proposal would look like on my sandbox here, but dropped the idea of categories (3).

I kept the idea of having a few pictures (2) because party leaders are definitely a major factor in PR elections in Europe or Israel. In these parliamentary regimes, legislative elections are also an indirect executive election. And this is a major topic of the election.

This is a kind of middle ground between both templates. {{Infobox election}} was tailored for Westminster-type democracies where horse races are frequent and parties almost unchanging. {{Infobox legislative election}} would make sense for Latin American Parliaments that are often elected proportionally but whose leaders are secondary due to the separation of powers.

Maybe we need a third template for parliamentary regimes where you can have both a dozen parties and a horse race.

Kahlores (talk) 22:23, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

The last thing we need is another infobox. The addition of the government formation is an unnecessary level of detail IMO – this is meant to be a very brief summary, and this is information we would not include in either type of infobox. Leaders are already listed by name; we don't need to see pictures of them too – it takes up far too much space. If groups of parties run as formal blocs (this is not the case in Israel), we can do something like in 2009 Albanian parliamentary election. Number 57 23:18, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

OK, I have done one in that style. It does not work exactly, because we need to sort out the Joint List, but let me know what you think. KingWither (talk) 17:37, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

September 2019 Israeli legislative election

9 May 2019 (2019-17-09)
All 120 seats in the Knesset
Turnout	69.8%
Party Leader Vote % Seats +/– Netanyahu Bloc (55) Likud Benjamin Netanyahu 25.10% 32 −6 Shas Aryeh Deri 7.44% 9 +1 UTJ Yaakov Litzman 6.06% 7 −1 Yamina Ayelet Shaked 5.87% 7 +1 Gantz Bloc (54) Blue and White Benny Gantz 25.95% 33 −2 Joint List Ayman Odeh 10.60% 13 +3 Labor-Gesher Amir Peretz 4.80% 6 0 Democratic Union Nitzan Horowitz 4.34% 5 +1 Other (8) Yisrael Beiteinu Avigdor Lieberman 6.99% 8 +3 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Caretaker Prime Minister before Elected Caretaker Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Likud No government formed and fresh elections called. [[Netanyahu remains PM in interim|Netanyahu remains PM in interim]]

I think you have completed the infobox as it would be done, but I don't see a consensus to make this change. Bondegezou (talk) 20:21, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

The YB-BW vote-sharing agreement

Anybody know if they've actually signed one or not? The cited article implies that they did but doesn't say so explicitly; its headline implies that they haven't done so yet but are considering it; and other news articles are variously reporting that they have, plan to, or are still talking about it. Kimpire (talk) 09:38, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

It was officially signed today: [1].David O. Johnson (talk) 16:19, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Question abut table

@Number 57: whats the order for the parties in the results table? A-z? by opinion polls or what. IsraeliIdan (talk) 11:52, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

I left the parties with seats in the order from the last table (plus Otzma, who may win a seat), then put the minor parties in alphabetical order. It's not really important. Number 57 11:57, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Also, can you sort out the Allegations of misconduct section? it's really poorly written and formatted (you shouldn't leave spaces between punctuation and references or between references, and you shouldn't leave references as bare urls). Number 57 11:59, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Trying to, Im on my phone and its kinda crazy. IsraeliIdan (talk) 12:46, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

If you can't edit properly, I would strongly advise not doing so until you are able to. Number 57 15:19, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Prime Minister, not interim Prime Minister.

Netty is still prime minister of Israel, as he hasn't resigned. He's prime minister, not interim-prime minister. GoodDay (talk) 14:15, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

What does new mean

@David O. Johnson: New doesn't mean that they ran with someone and then alone. New means that they are completely new to politics. IsraeliIdan (talk) 15:45, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

New means that the party did not run in the previous elections, whether they are new or simply did not run. However, if a party did run in the previous elections as part of another one, they should not be listed as new. Number 57 16:04, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Time to edit

@Number 57: https://twitter.com/kann_news/status/1174050774223138816 IsraeliIdan (talk) 20:52, 17 September 2019 (UTC) (Yamina is breaking up)

But we would still have them in the infobox for the election as Yamina because that's how they ran. We can make a mention in the words about them breaking up, but as soon as the polls closed, we need to look at the history as well. Bkissin (talk) 20:58, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

@Bkissin: Can you add 69.4 as the official voter percentage IsraeliIdan (talk) 21:05, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Zvikorn It's already there in the results table under turnout. :) Bkissin (talk) 21:25, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Likud seats change

Hi,

In the "April 2019 results" the "Blue and White" is said to have got 35 seats. The "September 2019 Israeli legislative election" table in the top right says that now they have 32 seats - a change of -3. That fits because 32+3=35.

In the "April 2019 results" the "Likud" is also said to have got 35 seats. The "September 2019 Israeli legislative election" table in the top right says that now they have 31 seats - a change of -7. That DOES NOT FIT because 31+7 <> 35.

Confusing. --Honymand (talk) 11:49, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

@The Likud Incident Is After The Fact That Kulanu Mergered Into Likud And One MK From There Got Into Yamina.

Thanks.--Honymand (talk) 12:49, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

This is deceptive. Kulanu was a different party. Now some politicians spread - not only to Likud but elsewhere. The chart says "Likud" vs previous "Likud".

No it isn't. Kulanu merged into Likud, so its seat total is included in Likud's from the last election. This is standard practice on election articles for calculating seat changes. Number 57 19:50, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Agree, that is like a joint list. Kulana is now part of LikudFideKoeln (talk) 20:03, 19 September 2019 (UTC) I mean, I agree with Number57 FideKoeln (talk) 20:07, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Results

In the future, wouldn't it be helpful on result charts to list the total number of valid votes only for those who passed the threshold, mid-chart, while also still keeping total votes at the bottom? This would seem to be helpful, as it is the total number of eligible votes which is used to calculate intial seat allocation resulting in the indicator (votes-by-seat). Otherwise, the chart doesn't make much sense to/serve much use for a laymen looking at it. There would appear to be a space at the threshold, even, where you could add this vote total. --Criticalthinker (talk) 02:32, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

I think it's fine the way it is. It's best to include the full count for the sake of completeness. David O. Johnson (talk) 03:16, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

I wasn't talking about removing the full count, rather adding the count for the threshold parties. --Criticalthinker (talk) 03:37, 27 September 2019 (UTC)