Tel Aviv – The polls open again for Israeli voters, called to vote for the fourth time in two years. The last time the electoral appointment was held, on March 2, 2020, Covid was still an unknown: there were only a dozen cases in the country, but already about six thousand people in quarantine, who had voted in polling stations special. A year later, Israel returns to vote with the highest immunization rate in the world (over half of the population is already vaccinated with the second dose of Pfizer serum). And if in the last month the country has returned to live the old routine made up of restaurants, bars, places of culture, today the new normality in the Covid era, at least for a day, is quite present.
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About 40,000 people in quarantine and 12,000 positive vote in fact in 800 seats to this in hospitals, retirement homes and neighborhood clinics, but also in special “drive in” centers. Those who do not have a vehicle can book the transport service organized by the central electoral committee. Seats accessible to the rest of the population this year have doubled to avoid overcrowding, while drones monitor the formation of queues from the sky. If too large crowds are identified, one of the 50 “voting buses”, public service buses converted into mobile seats, could come to the rescue.
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The big unknown in this fourth round of elections is the turnout. In the three previous appeals – April 2019, September 2019, March 2020 – the turnout increased significantly, going from 68 to 71%, but this time it could be the addiction factor, with the public exhausted by the political impasse, and the fear of contagions, despite the electoral committee’s efforts to guarantee a safe vote. The turnout will be decisive for decreeing the fate of at least four parties that oscillate on the threshold (3.25%), decisive for establishing any future government structure. Among these there is also Blue White of Benny Gantz – which from 33 mandates drops to 4 in the polls – current Minister of Security, who according to the government agreement signed last May, should have entered the position of prime minister instead of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to November 2021.
The other big enigma that will complicate the reading of the results are the double envelopes, that is those votes cast in the non-residential seats. This year, there are half a million votes cast in this way – including those of the positives, the sick and the quarantined, as well as the votes of thousands of Israelis who only today return to the country to vote, after the airport reopened its doors on Sunday after months of closure. To welcome them on landing, in addition to the buffer station, there will also be polling stations.
The exit polls are scheduled at 22:00 (21 in Italy), with the closing of the polling stations. But according to the president of the electoral committee, the final results will only be available on Friday. The latest polls published photograph results similar to those of the past elections: no prime minister has enough numbers (61 seats out of 120) to form a government relying only on natural allies and therefore, in all likelihood, we will again see a long phase of party negotiations. Unlike the previous three episodes, however, this time Netanyahu’s Likud is the first undisputed party, with 32 seats, while the second party, Yesh Atid of Yair Lapid, currently head of the opposition, he is given only 20 seats. The tip of the balance could be the leader of the nationalist right Naftali Bennet, which – together with the ultra-Orthodox parties that traditionally support Netanyahu – with its 8-10 seats could guarantee the current prime minister a majority, albeit a rather narrow one. And, absurd as it may seem, the option of fifth elections already in the summer remains a scenario that no analyst feels more likely to exclude.
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