Two months from now, Israelis will be headed to the ballot box for the 5th time in three years. And one expert is predicting that the election outcome and the future of the Jewish state will actually be in the hands of the Arab community.
A recent survey shows that at least half of Israelis plan to vote the same way they always do—or at least how they did in the March 2021 election that ousted Benjamin Netanyahu and resulted in the unlikely “unity coalition” government of Naftali Bennett and our current prime minister, Yair Lapid.
The election outcome may hinge on the voter turnout among Israel’s Arab minority population. A low voter turnout might enable the parties on the Right to form a solid coalition government; a high turnout would be a game-changer in another direction.
The very fact that Arab citizens of Israel vote just as Jewish citizens reveals that they enjoy a freedom that Arabs of Syria and Saudi Arabia could only dream of. The Muslims of Iran vote for a president, but it is a sham, as the religious Ayatollahs rule the country by Muslim law. Palestinian Arabs have not had an election since 2006.
“The future of the nation-state of the Jewish people will be determined by the Arabs whether we like it or not,” said Tamar Hermann, a professor and academic director of the Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI).
Hermann studies the dynamics of Israel’s elections. She released the findings from a poll she conducted—the Israeli Voice Index—and found that Arab voters appear discouraged and not interested in participating in the next election. Hermann’s numbers indicate Arab voter turnout could be at an all-time low in this next turn at the ballot box.
Of the Arab voters who responded in the Index poll, 26 percent said they did not plan to vote. Another poll—Stat-Net—conducted last month tracks with Hermann’s findings. The Stat-Net survey said that the turnout among Arab voters could be as low as 39 percent. Anything under 40 percent would be at a historic low. Two years ago, in 2020, a staggering 65 percent of Arab society voted in Israel’s elections.
It could be that they, along with many others in Israel, are simply disillusioned and weary from our political process. Imagine if the US had to go to the polls for five presidential elections in less time than one term for the highest office in the land.
Whatever the cause for the lack of voting enthusiasm among the Arab population in Israel, Hermann believes that a lackluster turnout would create a “disproportionate strengthening of the Right.”
And it appears that former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is counting on that. He needs to form a bloc of at least 61 seats to take the helm again, and Netanyahu recently told the media he is confident he has at least 62 seats under his command—and he appears to be basing his optimism at least in part on a low Arab turnout.
However, in politics—especially Israeli politics—nothing is ever certain for long. Prof. Jonathan Rynhold, head of the Political Studies Department at Bar Ilan University, cautioned that “things can change very quickly.
“Arab voting went up and down in the last two elections by around 15 percent. The margins are too narrow and the amount of developments that could affect them in the short term are too many,” Bar Ilan University’s Head of Political Studies Professor Jonathan Rynhold said.
Because no single party ever receives enough votes to govern and a coalition is always necessary, Israelis try to keep that in mind when they go to the polls. We have our preferred party that we vote for, but we also think about who they might align with, and how do we feel about that. It is like a game of chess! Always trying to be three steps ahead. Sometimes, you don’t vote for your party but the party that you hope they will align with.
Rynhold found tremendous party loyalty among the larger, more established groups like Likud (Netanyahu’s party)—78 percent of Likud voters intend to vote for their party. Rynhold said, however, that most Israelis are motivated by a “what could be worse” mentality rather than focusing on what could make the country better.
“They don’t just think it could be better, but that it could be worse, so perhaps it is best to stay where they are,” Rynhold said.
The survey from IDI showed how closely linked party loyalty and family ties are. Most Jewish people in Israel (61 percent) tend to vote the same way their family and friends do.
“Choosing your political bloc in Israel is something deeply entrenched in your identity, and people do not change their identity,” Hermann said. “The room for maneuvering is very limited… We are in a stalemate. But this is not an electoral stalemate. It is a cognitive, psychological, and identity-related stalemate.”
Hermann said that the economy is a high priority for voters and that the party leader (except for Likud and Netanyahu) does not really matter to most Israelis. And for the most part, Israelis still believe their vote matters. Two-thirds of those surveyed in the IDI poll disagreed with the statement: “It doesn’t matter who you vote for; it doesn’t change the situation”—a level of disagreement that Hermann said was surprisingly the highest on record to this question since 2015.
