If you spend some quality time with Y-net’s interactive map (in Hebrew, color-coded by party if you zoom in), you could come pretty quickly to the conclusion that electoral reform would not make a large difference in the country’s party fragmentation. Even in the very unlikely event that a single-seat district system were plopped down in Israel, many of the smaller parties would remain quite viable. A more realistic reform, such as to a medium-sized district system, probably would not reduce the number of parties by much.
For instance, here are the largest few parties’ vote percentages in selected cities, listed more or less from north to south:
Kiryat Shmona: Likud 30, YB 22, Kadima 17
Katzrin (Golan): YB 28, Kadima 26, Likud 22
Tiberias: Likud 35, Shas 19, YB 16, Kadima 15
Nazareth: Hadash 52, Balad 23 –and about the same in Umm al-Fahm
Haifa: Kadima 28, Likud 20, YB 16, Labor 13
Ariel (deep in West Bank): Likud 45, YB 31
Tel Aviv-Yaffa: Kadima 34, Likud 19, Labor 15
Bnei Brak: UTJ 55, Shas 27, Likud 6
Rishon L’Tzion: Kadima 33, Likud 27, YB 14
Jerusalem: Likud 24, UTJ 19
Ashdod: YB 26, Likud 14, Kadima 16, Shas 15
Ashkelon: Likud 31, YB 27, Kadima 16
Sderot: Likud 33, YB 23, Shas 13, Kadima 12
Be’er Sheva: Likud 28, YB 25, Kadima 20
Eilat: Kadima 35, Likud 25, YB 15
(These communities differ widely in population, but only the first two, plus Ariel and Sderot, are under 25,000; Katzrin is quite small.)
Haaretz also has tool for looking at the Israeli vote by city or sector (in English), but most of its levels of aggregation are bigger than the Ynet tool. It does, however, show that Ra’am-Ta’al dominated the Bedouin communities, with 80%.
Strikingly, almost every party is the largest or second largest somewhere, including some that have less than 5% of the national vote. Certainly, there is no guarantee that all these would survive electoral reform. The largest party is not over 30% in many cases and one or both of the top two parties might be displaced by new alliances of currently trailing parties in any given region. Nonetheless, it is unlikely that any districted electoral system would significantly cut into Israel’s political fragmentation (although if the districts were small enough or if the threshold were raised significantly, it could certainly make for a lot of disproportionality) .
The one relatively large party that does not show up in the top two anywhere among the cities listed at Ynet is Labor. It runs third or lower everywhere, except the Kibbutz sector (shown at Haaretz).* So if the objective of electoral reform is to squeeze out Labor once and for all, it might be achievable. If the goal is to make a substantial dent in the country’s fragmentation, quite possibly not.
For the national vote and seat totals, see Electoral Panorama.
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* Kibbutz sector: Labor 31, Kadima 31, Meretz 18. So the old Zionist ‘left’ survives somewhere as a force, at least. Meretz (3% nationally) also managed to get 8% in Tel Aviv.
You’re correct that single-member districts wouldn’t eliminate third parties. Like Canada, Israel has several politically-organized interest groups that are geographically concentrated enough to control districts despite nearly any gerrymandering scheme. The above voting patterns can be explained as follows: Bnei Brak is the largest haredi city, Jerusalem has large and concentrated haredi neighborhoods, Nazareth and Umm al Fahm are mostly-Arab cities, and Ashdod has a Russian near-majority.
On the other hand, the fragmentation would definitely be reduced. For one thing, the non-geographically-concentrated parties – meaning Shas, Labor, Meretz, Habayit Yehudi, the National Union and Balad – would be wiped out. None of them came first in any significant geographic area, and although Shas came second in a few places, it came second to Likud (which would get a higher preference from nearly all non-Shas voters) rather than Kadima (where it might be helped over the top by Likud voters’ preferences). Getting rid of Shas – or, more likely, forcing many of its deputies to join Likud and be ruled by a central committee rather than a crazy rabbi – would remove a good deal of obstructionism right there, and the more extreme ultra-nationalists (both Jewish and Arab) would likely end up off the map entirely rather than finding a home in one of the major parties.
Also, the areas where Hadash, UTJ or Yisrael Beiteinu would dominate – especially the last, whose electoral base outside Ashdod is geographically scattered – don’t account for that much of the electorate. They might pick up 20 or 30 seats all told, but the majors would get the rest, and in YB’s case, that might facilitate the saner members melting back into Likud while the crazier ones go off to the wilderness. In the meantime, Labor and Meretz refugees would run as Kadima candidates in some of the more liberal districts. Figure a six-party Knesset rather than 12, with two Arab factions (Hadash in the north and the United Arab List among the Bedouin), a couple of YB representatives from Ashdod, and UTJ picking up Bnei Brak, Modi’in Ilit and some Jerusalem neighborhoods, while Kadima and Likud split about 90 to 100 seats. My gut feeling in this election is that FPTP would have helped Kadima while preferential voting would have helped Likud, but in another election that could just as easily go the other way.
All other things being equal, this would make Israel much more governable, with two-party coalitions possible most of the time. Of course, all other things – particularly party discipline – might notbe equal. Not to mention that UTJ, which will sit with anyone if the price is right, would be in the position of kingmaker much like the National Religious Party was in the 1970s and 1980s, and the rabbinic stranglehold over family law (assuming that it isn’t broken this year) would become that much tighter. The good outweighs the bad, though, given that the current system manifestly doesn’t work – Israel is one of the few countries where I believe that a British or American system would, at least in the short term, be preferable.
Seed planted by Jonathan Edelstein — 12 February 2009 @ 11:17
Why not Single Transferable Vote in small multi member districts? And a top up list with who ever is the best looser within a party and in a district gaining seats at the nation wide tier. Would that work?
Seed planted by Suaprazzodi — 13 February 2009 @ 19:10
I suppose the answer to “why not STV for Israel?” is the same as the answer to “why not STV in [insert country name here]?”
What was the last national jurisdiction to adopt STV, not counting a lone election in Estonia in 1990? Off the top of my head, I do not know the answer. I just know it’s not recent.
STV, so loved by reform advocates, so marginal to the real world of elections.
Maybe British Columbia (not a national jurisdiction, but a pretty significant sub-national one) can start a trend. The second STV referendum is later this spring.
Seed planted by MSS — 13 February 2009 @ 21:46
Scotland – one of the U.K.’s four constituent countries – adopted STV for local elections back in 2007. However, they still use AMS for elections to the Scottish Parliament, FPTP for elections to the Westminster Parliament and list PR for elections to the European Parliament – in all four different electoral systems.
Seed planted by Manuel Alvarez-Rivera — 13 February 2009 @ 22:24
There are other cases of STV having been adopted in recent years at local level (e.g. some boards in NZ), but I meant national. I am not aware of any cases at the intermediate level (i.e. province, state, etc). BC would be the first in a while. Northern Ireland would be a not-too-long-ago example, though of course the rest of Ireland was already using it.
AMS? Around here we call that MMP! (I always found the name, Additional Member System, to imply the list was an afterthought–which I suppose maybe it is in FPTP jurisdictions. It also implies it is parallel rather than compensatory.)
The diversity of electoral systems in the UK nowadays is quite remarkable.
OK, I know I started it by mentioning BC and then went on about NZ & Ireland just now, but let’s remember this planting is about Israeli regional votes distributions and possible electoral reform. I don’t think STV is in the realm of the (politically) possible in Israel, but if someone has reason to argue otherwise, let’s see it.
Seed planted by MSS — 13 February 2009 @ 23:47
Actually, I originally typed AMS/MMP, but in the end edited it back to the formal usage in the U.K. At any rate, both terms are used interchangeably, as I’ve pointed out on my website.
But back to Israel, I should note that a proposal for reform was put forward two years ago by the Magidor Commission, which called for raising the threshold to 2.5% and having half the members of the Knesset elected in regional constituencies; a January 2007 Haaretz editorial on the proposed electoral reform is available here.
Incidentally, one of the minor parties taking part in last Tuesday’s election, HaYisraelim (The Israelis), ran on the issue of electoral reform as proposed by the Magidor Commission. However, it only won 856 votes. The Jerusalem Post, which advocates adopting the Magidor Commission recommendations, has an article on the party here; for what is worth, they were also covered by BBC News here (however, the BBC article indicates half the Knesset seats would be filled in single-member districts, while the J-Post piece clearly refers to multi-member constituencies in the regions – go figure).
Seed planted by Manuel Alvarez-Rivera — 14 February 2009 @ 01:34
If you go back through the Israel block, you’ll find discussion of the reform proposal that Manuel mentions. And thanks to him for the additional links about it.
I suppose it is possible that I wrote about a different proposal. There have been several. In fact, I recall something almost identical being proposed when I was in grad school, many eons ago.
(Electoral reform is an issue in Israel with a long history and lots of potential. And the cynic in me says always will be.)
Seed planted by MSS — 15 February 2009 @ 17:50
Victoria adopted STV for its 2006 Legislative Council election.
Seed planted by Chris Curtis — 17 February 2009 @ 11:27
If one zooms in on the map on
you see so many color codes (a legend would be helpful), meaning so many different parties arriving ‘first past the post’ somewhere… (even Green/Meimad in a community called Klil, weren’t you looking for such constituencies, MSS?)
Seed planted by Bancki — 18 February 2009 @ 08:43
What one can’t determine from the map is the population of the regions depicted, so one can’t infer possible districting from it.
As for Klil, it sounds like the sort of place I would like:
There are 100 families living in Klil.
Seed planted by MSS — 18 February 2009 @ 17:14