Israeli Exit Polls: Livni/Kadima=30 Seats, Netanyahu/Likud=28
These can change – I’ve seen it, it happens. But this is the most current spread for now.
What I don’t get is: Livni had the most last time too – but couldn’t form the coalition and that’s what got us to today. So, now what? According to Jameel:
10:27 PM What happens next: [that's 3:27EST]
1. Final Results to be announced by 6 AM [11pmEST]
2. President Shimon Peres will then go from party to party and ask if they will form a government with the leader of the largest party (and if not, which leader would they follow).
3. Assuming it’s Livni — she will try to woo Lieberman into her government, meaning that the left would have a majority government.
4. If Lieberman holds strong, then the second largest party leader (Netanyahu) will be asked to form a government — and since the Rightwing is larger than the left, its likely he’ll succeed.
What’s this mean to anyone who hasn’t studied these coalition gov’ts? Basically, there’s a somewhat historic realignment since Labor is coming in with fewer seats than Yisrael Beiteinu. Typically, Likud was cast as the right wing, Labor as the left, Kadimah – a relatively new party created by Ariel Sharon (and Ehud Olmert’s party) – somewhere between the two but many believed closer to being dovish, and now Yisrael Beiteinu as far right.
I know little about YB other than what I’ve read in the last few days. Again, the idea of direct representational government is a lovely thing in theory, but in practice, I don’t know – not so much maybe. Pretty messy actually – in my estimation.
We’ll know more over the next few hours.
By the way, Jameel, the creator of the chart, put “Right” in blue and “Left” in red – interesting, since here in the USA, we do it the other way.
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6 Responses to “Israeli Exit Polls: Livni/Kadima=30 Seats, Netanyahu/Likud=28”
I'm relatively sure we're about the only country that has blue for left and red for right and it confuses everyone else. That and the refusal to go to the metric system. Perhaps they are related.
Don't forget the side we drive on, and the way the water faucets turn, and the water going down the drain and…oh – wait – some of that is that equator thingy, right?
Sorry. I'm getting punchy. I actually didn't know that about the red and blue – interesting.
Here is more information than you could ever possibly want to know about colors representing political parties.
Oh my goodness!! Thank you lol. All the things I'd never learn if not for blogging.
I find it amazing how quickly things can get ingrained. As they point out, historically neither Democrats nor Republicans have had any associated colors and it was random based on the source. Only beginning in 2000 did they coordinate and it took less than two years for them to be associated so strongly…and it was probably due to the contentious nature of the election and the fact that there was such an easy to understand meme.
Mikkel – to what extent do you think that is connected, though, not necessarily to a dumbing down or anything but to this putting out there, via consumer ads and who knows what else, easy ways to remember/to identify things – do you know what I mean? Some people just prefer to grasp things that way and then it becomes convention – do you know what I mean? I'm not explaining it very well!! Sorry.