the communists are coming!

Three things to watch in the municipal election this Tuesday:

1. Tel Aviv: Mayor Ron Huldai is running for a third term after 10 years in office, backed by both Kadima and Labor parties. On the previous election Huldai won in a landslide without really campaigning, but public opinion of him has changed in the last two years. Huldai has failed to address the problem of raising rent and further worsened the situation for himsels by declaring that this was a normal result of the free market. Tel Aviv during his time in office became so attractive, he claimed, that everyone wanted to live in it. Huldai, a former pilot for the Air Force, who became a national figure as the successful principal of one of the city's most prestigious high schools, has also made some unpopular decisions, such as taking down the legendary Osishkin basketball arena, home of Hapoel Tel Aviv, the second most popular team in the city.

   His surprising challenger is MK Dov Khenin of Hadash, the radical left wing party. Khenin has built an Obama-like coalition of representatives from the poor neighborhoods in the south of the city, and the young students, journalists and bohemian crowd from the city center. Khenin is the grandson of an important Chabad rabbi, and was the former chairman of the “Environment and Life” organization, which amalgamates most of the environmental organizations in Israel.

The polls gave Huldai a 20 plus points advantage just a month ago, but the race has tightened since and the margin is considered to be in the high single digit area. Still, even the slight chance that a communist like Khenin will lead Israel's cultural and financial capital is surprising, to say the least, considering the current political atmosphere.

My prediction: Huldai, by a margin of 15 points or more.

2. Jerusalem: Israel's bankrupt capital presents its next mayor with too many challenges: the population is poor, most of the secular elite and business people have long fled the city, and the Palestinians on the east side are getting more and more hostile (it's no surprise: Israel has made everything in its power to make their lives miserable). Still, being the mayor of one of the worlds most holly and well known cities carries some prestige; so three men are actually running for the post.

   Reb Uri Lupoliansky, the city's first Hasidic mayor, is not running for re-election. The front runner in the polls is the secular right-wing leaning businessman Nir Barkat, who had until recently a 15 points advantage over ultra-orthodox MK Meir Porush. It was supposed to be an easy one for Barkat, since some important rabbis have opposed Porush's candidacy publicly. But Barkat has alienated the few liberal seculars left in the city with his anti Arab rhetoric, and Porush has gained some momentum. The eccentric millionaire Arkady Gaidamak is also running, and might hurt Barkat even further with the secular vote.

   My prediction: Porush will turn out to be the surprise of this election, winning the capitol with a narrow margin.

3. The Green Party: The municipal election in Israel is a split vote: you cast one vote for the mayor and another for a party to be elected for the city council. The ecological ideology, once totally foreign to Israeli discourse, has continuously been gaining ground, and the Greens are now expected to get 2-3 MK for the first time in the general election. Could the Green Party be “the default vote” for the city council this Tuesday for those interested only in the race for the mayoral position?

   My prediction: The Greens will have a good day, especially on the northern suburbs of Tel Aviv (though not in Tel Aviv itself, where Khenin's party, “city for all of us” – the name doesn't sound better in Hebrew – will carry most of the ecological vote). It will be also interesting to watch Avigdor Liberman's “Israel Beitenu” performance tomorrow. The party chose to go with a national campaign, presenting only Liberman's picture and non of the municipal candidates. I think Liberman might perform well in the mixed cities.

   As for myself, I will vote for Dov Khenin for mayor of Tel Aviv and Meretz for city council.

Today's Polls 10/31

It's the first weekend since the general election for the Knesset was announced, and we have three new polls: in “Haaretz”, the “Jerusalem Post” and the new metro paper “Israel Hayom”. All three polls reflect higher support for the right wing block than the “Maariv” poll from the midlle of the week. On Israel Hayom both blocks have exactly 60 MKs. Haaretz gives a 61-59 advantage to the right over the center-left block. The Jerusalem Post gives the right a 64-56 advantage, with Kadima and Likud tied at 27 and 14 going to Labor. For some reason, the Post didn't publish the results for the other parties.

The center-left block will be lead by Tzipi Livni, except for the unlikely event of the Labor party getting the same number of MKs (or more) as Kadima, in which case Ehud Barak will lead this block. Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads the right wing block, has the upper hand in the coalition game to begin with, since the non-Zionist Arab MKs, which are part of the left-center block, are not considered an eligible part of the government to come. One should also note that we count the Green Party as part of the center-left block, though it might join the right wing after the election. More on the two blocks and on the process of coalition making in future posts.

Here are the Haaretz and Israel Hayom polls:

PARTY // HAARTZ // ISRAEL HAYOM // PRESENT KNESSET

Kadima 31 30 29

Likud 31 31 12

Labor 10 13 19

Israel Beitenu 11 8 11

Shas 10 10 12

Arab Parties (*) 11 10 10

Ihud Leumi 3 6 9

Meretz 5 5 5

Yahadut Hatorah 6 5 6

Green Praty 2 2 -

Gil (senior citizens) - - 7

Right Block (Likud + Israel Beitenu + Shas + Ihud Leumi + Yahadut Hatorah) 61 60 50

Left-Center block (Kadima + Labor + Meretz + Arab Parties + Green/Gil) 59 60 70

Polls published in Israel reflect answers given by likely and decided voters. In many cases they won't even note the likely-unlikely voters rate, nor the decided-undecided. That is the case with the Haartez poll. Israel Hayom's poll has 30 percent (!) of people who are not decided or that refused to answer the poll. The Jerusalem Post poll found that 17 percent of the respondents are undecided.

* Most pollsters put the 3 major Arab parties (Hadash, Balad and Raam) into one category (“Arab Parties”). Haaretz's poll, however, gives Hadash 6 MKs, Balad 3 and Raam 2.

today's poll, 27.10

The paper I work for, Maariv, published the first poll for the upcoming election. Here are the results:

Kadima: 31 Members of Knesset

Likud: 29 MKs

Israel Beitenu (Avigdor Liberman’s party), Labor, Arab Parties (Hadash + Balad + Raa’m): 11 MKs each

Shas (Sephardic orthodox): 8 MKs

Ihud Leumi (the right wing front): 7 MKs

Meretz (left wing liberal party): 5 MKs

Yahadut Hatorah (Ashkenazi orthodox): 4 MKs

Green Party (not present in the current Knesset): 3 MKs

The magic number in the Knesset is 60 (out of 120 seats). This poll gives the center-left (Kadima + Labor + Meretz + Arabs + Green) a block of 61 MKs, meaning Tzipi Livni will have the upper hand in the battle to form the next government.

However, there are a few things to consider:

First, the left and center usually underperform in the election (or, more accurately, over perform in the polls), and given the current political atmosphere, it is hard to see Livni get over the 30 mark, which is still better than Ehud Olmert did.

Second, Shas hasn’t gotten bellow 10 since the 1992 election, and it's not going to happen this time either.

Third, Liberman hasn't reached his full potential, which should be around 14-15 MK. With his anti Arab rhetoric, he has the ability to take votes not only from Likud, but also from Kadima and even Labor.

If I had to guess today, I would estimate the right-religious block crossing the 60, even by as much as 5-6 seats. But we still have a lot of time before the election. For now, it’s clear that Livni is going into the campaign much stronger than one could expect, given her failure to form a government.

By the way, the same pollster (Teleseker) just ran a survey in Israel on the upcoming US presidential election. The winner: John McCain, by a 12% margin. Exactly as in Texas.