About this episode

Haviv Rettig Gur explains the intricacies of the Israeli election system and what to expect in the upcoming election.

To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur). And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur). -- Israel's first election since October 7 will be held on October 27 -- and the system it runs through is one of the simplest in the free world, which is exactly why the results look insane from outside. One district: the whole country. One ballot slip. You vote for a party, never a person. In this primer, Haviv walks through how a slip of paper becomes 120 Knesset seats: the 3.25% threshold that erased Bennett and Shaked's party in 2019 by just 1,380 votes, the Bader-Ofer leftover math that quietly rewards big parties and can decide the election, and the surplus-vote agreements filed by October 16 that could hand a bloc the last two seats -- and the country. Plus: why the most chaotic Knesset in memory produced the most stable government since 1973, why religiosity predicts an Israeli's vote better than income or ethnicity…

People in this episode

Host: Haviv Rettig Gur

Topics covered

• Israeli elections
• Knesset
• voting system
• political analysis
• Arab turnout
• demographics

Sponsors

David A

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Israel

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