Rabin Square

On my way back home from a friend's house, I passed by Rabin square during the annual rally commemorating PM Yitzhak Rabin. Both Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni spoke on stage, and were equally unimpressive. I don't think I can name a single Israeli politician who can give a decent speech (some say Menachem Begin could, but that was before my time).

There were some 50,000 people there, and the atmosphere was as gloomy as ever. These are the remains of “the Peace Camp”, once a real power in the political arena and now a nostalgic movement which hangs on to the memory of its dead leader. The left is going to crash in the next election, and the only active political force advocating negotiation with Israel's neighbors is Kadima – a party formed mostly by Likud members. If the historical role of the left was to get Israel to leave the occupied territories on its own will, it failed to fulfill it. Israel has left Gaza and Lebanon, and will leave the West Bank, due to terrorism and international pressure. We lost the debate.

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.