Talk:2006 Israeli legislative election

message: Somebody add an explanation or a link to the "threshold" law, which effectively determines that the minimum votes to enter the Knesset is equivalent to two (2) seats. This puts smaller parties in jeopardy (currently, speculation has is that Green Leaf and Dr Tibi's party are "on the threshold"). elpincha 10:56, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That is explained (albeit briefly) in the article Elections in Israel.--Nitsansh 15:32, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Ahuz Ha'hassima

message: There are at least 3 such polls published by Israeli TV channels. Why not publish all of them? There's no indication at this stage which is better than the others?--Nitsansh 21:35, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Exit polls 

message: Aren't they redundant once the elections are over?--Nitsansh 21:56, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not quite. They provide a comparison results versus hitherto predictions. Also, please create another table for the estimates of other channels; calling them exit polls & noting them side-by-side is problematic (just because haaretz does so, does not mean we have to). El_C 22:33, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, see bellow. El_C 22:42, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pre-election polls 

message: There are many polls out there. The IBA Radio station I got the results of Mabat's exit poll (the only exit poll) had another poll unrelated to Mabat's with the only researcher who successfuly predicted Peres' surprise loss to Netanyahoo, for example. But these are not exit polls; they do not involve polling stations and they do not involve +25,000 people. There is actually a sound methodological rational behind my position. El_C 22:42, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are 3 main TV channels in Israel. Each one conducted and published its own exit poll. Only statisticians make a difference between them. At this stage, with no real results available yet, this is the info that we have. Only when the real results will be published, we'll know which one predicted the results better. I see no reason to publish one poll and ignore the others. Channel 1 (IBA) has no monopoly on exit polls.--Nitsansh 22:44, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It has one here, because they actually conducted a real one. These are not actual exit polls in the traditional sense of the word. El_C 22:47, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not only statisticians make a difference between them; the differences in metholdology and scope are not so insiginificant. It is widely seen as most authoritative, even those other channels highlight it before any other (except their own given one, of course). It should not be too difficult to create another table, or qualify it in the prior one. Someone else can attend to that, though. El_C 22:52, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Note that when I refer to IBA Radio, this is not Mabat's exit poll cited in the article and on the main page, it is another poll that is not mentioned here (though it should, is as authoritative as the other channels, but less so than Mabat's, is my point — in case someone misses that and thinks I'm talking about the same thing). El_C 22:56, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

text: This is what I mean. It's a difference only people in the statistic profession make. All 3 channels present their predictions, based on polls conducted AFTER people have voted. The differences between them are up to 2-3 seats, which is within the statistic margin error anyway. But more important in my opinion is to emphasize that these are all PREDICTIONS, not RESULTS.--Nitsansh 22:58, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Exit polls hold more weight, they always do. I don't really care who conducts them. This year, Mabat is the only one to do so. El_C 23:01, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I've seen 5 different polls, all conducted after the elections. I'm not statistician and I don't know how each one was conducted. Every poll has a margin of error, the only real poll is the actual results. Those won't be available until tommorrow morning or even afternoon, and as reported in the last hour, because one polling box was destroyed and there might be a re-vote, the final results may take longer than usual. If those re-election might decide if one party makes the threshold or doesn't, it could change the distribution of seats in the Knesset.--Nitsansh 23:08, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Again, the point remains that only Mabat conducted an exit poll. I'm not dismissing the other polls, but it's an important distinction. El_C 23:16, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Blank edit summary reverts are inappropriate

message: About 50% of the votes have been counted so far, but they may not necessarily be representing the population.
Kadima is currently down to 28 seats, Labour on 20, Shas goes up to 13, Likud and Israel Beytenu both 12, NRP-Ihud Leumi 9, Pensioners 8, Yahadut Hatora 7, Meretz 5, Arab parties 5 (Raam 3, Hadash 2). Balad is close to the 2% threshold and might still get in.--Nitsansh 23:40, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting. Difficult to tell, though, as you note, since it might not be representative of all regions. El_C 23:45, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, don't forget the Odafim arrangments, that could prove significant. Ironically, the ones belonging to Likud go to Yisrael Beytenu. That amuses me. El_C 23:49, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's too early to tell how the surplus will be devided, but Kadima could have lost a seat or even 2 because it didn't make agreement with anyone... Likud and Israel Beytenu are together, and so are Shas with Yahadut Hatora and Labour with Meretz, so if one loses a seat it's likely to go to the same block... I don't recall at this moment which 2 Arab parties made agreement between them... if Balad is a partner to such agreement and will eventually go above the threshold, that could add 3 seats to the Arab block and significantly change the division.--Nitsansh 23:57, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was thinking that about Arab parties, but am also unsure about their arrangments. The distribution does not have to be of equale weight, of course. Thus, we can have YB getting another seat from Likud's, but Likud not getting anything from YB's odafim (that would be the amusing part), and vice versa. And, of course, as you note, Kadima is not playing the odafim game. El_C 00:04, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

text: That makes sense. Well, now, with 95% of the votes having been counted, it looks like the exit polls dead-on about Kadima (29), but were off about Liberman surpassing Bibiyahoo (14 to 12), overestimated Labour (predicted as 22, at 20). They were rather off about striking Balad from the map (predicted as 0, now at 3), & the total Arab parties vote (predicted as 8, now at 9). El_C 02:28, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Just while editing a minor dyslexia on my part, I noticed that with 96% of the votes now having been counted, Kadima is now at 28. El_C 02:30, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, and Liberman is ahead of Bibiyahoo again. It's the regional nature of the count which results in unpredictable ups and down. El_C 02:39, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The way the system goes, a shift of a few tenths of percent could change the division of seats for several parties. The possible scenario that I suggested earlier seems to have materialized, and once Balad went above the 2% barrier, its surplus agreement with Hadash gave them an extra seat, and so they jumped from 0 to 3. Apparently, the additional seats of the Arab parties were at the expense of Kadima, Labour, Meretz and Gimlaim who lost 5 seats between them compared to the earlier count, so the general share of the left and center (without the Arab) went down below 60 seats, and that means a coalition must include the religious parties. Now that increase their bargaining power... Kadima is in control and can choose its partners, and has the options of either right or left, but in any case, they need the religious...--Nitsansh 03:12, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it looks like the Arab vote ended up being higher than was predicted. I mentioned Dr. Fox as the only pollster to predict the Peres-Bibiyahoo surprise, so it should be noted that in this election, he was the first (about 2 weeks ago) to point out that Gimlaim were going to pass the threshold, and did they ever pass. Anyway, as I keep reiterating, the options open to Olmert become much more limited once he starts leHitkanes. It's possible even that Olmert will leave Peretz out of the govt., until it's time to relocate 75,000 settlers, then he'll need him. El_C 03:32, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're looking too far ahead... Olmert's first task is to form a government and then pass the budget bill, which normally should be approved on the new year but was postponed until after the election because Sharon could not pass it in the outgoing Knesset. This is not an easy thing because the Labour and other potential coalition partners will demand drastic changes in the economic policy of Bibi (which was among the main reasons to his downfall). --Nitsansh 03:56, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: True, I'm looking 1.5-2 yrs forward. This isn't to dismiss what you say about the budget bill where I do expect important changes (increased spending) now that Sharon's aura can no longer shield the disaffected from the bibitter neoliberal reality: taking food from the mouths of the hungry directly to the already-full pockets of the super-rich. El_C 10:24, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Great synopsis! It should be noted that those absentee ballots will favour the right-national parties more than their centre-left counterparts. El_C 03:50, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I lifted your comment about Gahal straight into Likud#Defeat in 2006. Well said, again. El_C 12:48, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

text: It appears Bibiyahoo has opted not to resign, so there goes my prediction. The Likud Central Committee is so going to want to be his friend. And ultra right-national Landau, head of Likud rebels is out? Sharon's would be pleased with that particular revenge. El_C 04:00, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sharon, unfortunately, is history. If he would be atill healthy, the results would be totally different. Olmert lost about 10 seats from what Kadima had when he replaced Sharon.--Nitsansh 04:10, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Getting Landau out (well, probably) was a close call in this case, so this is revenge from beyond the hospital bed. Yes, I also think Sharon would have gotten somewhere around 10 seats more than Olmert secured. El_C 04:36, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Real results are coming in... 

message: I found this image from the Economist article Israel's new politics to be quite useful, since I like most people are probably unaware of Israeli political parties. Right now the "Remarks" field in the party table explains a little of what the parties are about, but I think there is still not very much context for readers to understand what each party is about. jacoplane 15:21, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Details of the various parties could be found in their articles--Nitsansh 18:35, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overview of parties 

message: This segment is mostly speculative. Do we deal in Wikipedia with forcasts for the future? 
The first sentence is a factual error. In the elections of the 15th Knesset (1999), Likud was the biggest party with just 26 seats, 3 less than Kadima got this time, and 2nd place Labour had just 19 seats, so its by no means the first time that no party won more than 30 seats.
--Nitsansh 19:27, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh yeah, that's right (again). El_C 01:52, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree, remove. This segment is pure speculation and OR. --Shuki 19:05, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In particular the last paragraph dealing with Peretz's attempts to make a coalition without Kadima, which seems to be futile and was criticized by members of his own party as well as the media. This section belongs to Wikinews, not here, and some parts of it are allready old news. Until we have facts, such as the president's decision to appoint someone to form a government (I would expect that decision to be on Thursday or Friday, definately not earlier because official results of the election should be released on Wednesday), I think we better not write speculative news. Patience is a virtue that should be respected in political matters, especially in Israel's complicated political system.--Nitsansh 00:57, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Impact and coalition prospect 

message: IMO, these labels are OR unless a specific source can be referenced to accurately describe all parties. Why is National Union 'far-right', but Meretz only 'left'. Why is Kadima 'centrist'? Why is Labour only centre-left, but Likud right and nationalist (left is also formed of proud Israelis). What about the Arab parties? Why are they not described with left-right labels? --Shuki 19:01, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  left-wing, centrist, right-wing 

message: Likud's seat delta was based on its pre-Kadima numbers. Labor's delta was based on post-Kadima numbers. Since I could make everything consistent by only changing the Likud number, I have changed it from -28 to -15. If the other method of counting is prefered, at least six numbers on this page need to be changed.--65.96.168.107 00:37, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a tricky subject, because parties tend to evolve during the Knesset term. It's a common phenomena that parties merge or split, or both. For example: Likud got 38 seats in 2003 election. Shortly after the election, Scharanski's party "Yisrael Be'aliya" of 2 members merged with the Likud so it became a party of 40. When Kadima split 14 MKs left the Likud so there were 26, but afterwards Omri Sharon (the PM's son) resigned after being convicted of mis-handling the financial matters of his father's 1999 primaries campaign, and his replacement was a Likud member so at the end of the 16th Knesset assembly there were 27 Likud members. So which figure should be used?
Labour got 19 seats in the previous elections, but later Amir Peretz's Am Ehad party joined the Labour, but one of the 3 members split and didn't join Labour (he eventually joined Kadima), so it had 21 seats at the end of the assembly.
And so on with other parties...--Nitsansh 01:16, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inconsistent counting methodology 

message: Could someone who knows about Israeli politics move the results to the start of the article and have some information on which coalition was actually formed? Catchpole 11:40, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Result and Coalition 

message: I went to update the intro a bit, and ended up changing around and updating the background section as well.  Parts of it were still written from a during-the-campaign perspective.  As I skim down the rest of the article, some parts of the article suffer from this to an even greater degree.  The election is still being written about as a future event in some spots.  I am not sure when I will be able to get to this, so if anyone else gets a chance, jump right in.  As for the comment immediately above, I am still not sure that there is anything in this article about the coalition that was formed as a result of the election; on the other hand I am not sure whether that belongs in here or in another article -- and I am sure it already is in some other article, maybe the one about Kadima or the one about Ehud Olmert (or both).  I am not sure if there are separate articles about the different Israeli governments and Knessets (nor am I sure if there should be.)  Or maybe there is some WikiProject I should be participating in that coordinates all these things.  I don't know.  I just tried to fix one paragraph and it raised all these other issues.  6SJ7 18:48, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help needed 

message: Should this be in the article? Sure it's interesting, but there were another few thousands polling stations as well which are equally important as well. --Shuki 18:08, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've deleted it for now, but it would be good to have them, albeit on a larger scale than villages. I think the table on the Hebrew wiki is quite good. If you like it, I'll copy it across.  Number 57 08:25, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Such detailed information would be best suited in its own sub-page. Catchpole 09:01, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure we need a whole other article for one table. To be honest I think the table of participating parties could be scrapped and replaced with a list of parties and their leaders (I don't see how Arabic/Hebrew names are relevant to this article - they can be found out on the parties' article pages), which would "make room" for this table. Number 57 09:27, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The cross-section in the hebrew article seems representative enough. The parties table seems fine though. --Shuki 17:11, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I've added the table from he.wiki. I haven't got rid of the parties participating table, but I have cut it down (removed the Arabic column and fixed some links (Meimad were missing for e.g.)). Number 57 08:25, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks fine. To make it better, there should be some sort of ordering of the cities, I suggest one of these options: size, location (north to south), or ABC. --Shuki 19:32, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh yeah, I forgot to reorder it - the Hebrew version has the 4 big cities, then alphabetical, but of course they start with different letters in English... I'll do ABC Number 57 07:54, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  results per locality 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Israeli legislative election, 2006. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20060410132423/http://elections.walla.co.il:80/?w=/@displayMlmData.full to http://elections.walla.co.il/?w=/@displayMlmData.full
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 16:10, 29 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Israeli legislative election, 2006. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Corrected formatting/usage for http://elections.walla.co.il/?w=%2F%40displayMlmData.full
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060413080221/http://www.exc.com/JoelHoffman/Resources/Israel2006-1.html to http://www.exc.com/JoelHoffman/Resources/Israel2006-1.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 17:12, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified