Ineligibility Thresholds, Coalitions: Inside Israel's Electoral System

Israel's general election on October 27 will determine whether the country's longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will remain in power.

Here are the main features of Israel's electoral system.

Single Nationwide Constituency  

Israel's legislature consists of a single body, the Knesset, with 120 members elected for a four-year term. The law stipulates that elections must be "general, national, direct, equal, secret, and proportional". Parliament can be dissolved early by a simple majority vote, which is common in Israel. 

In exceptional circumstances, the Knesset may extend its term beyond four years by a vote of 80 members. The entire country of roughly 7.3 million voters forms a single constituency.  In the last elections in November 2022, turnout stood at 70.6 percent.

Voters cast their ballots for members of parliament via party lists of candidates. They may vote for only one list and do not provide ranked preferences.

The vote is based on proportional representation: the number of seats is allocated in proportion to the percentage of votes obtained by each list.

Any list passing an electoral threshold of 3.25 percent of valid votes -- equivalent to four seats -- enters the Knesset.

Ineligibility Threshold And Redistribution 

The 3.25-percent threshold has a major impact on the final results, with votes cast for lists that fail to reach that percentage "neutralised".  Party seat allocations are then based on their proportion of the remaining votes. For example, 20 percent of the remaining votes would earn a party 20 percent of the seats, or 24 Knesset members.

However, dividing vote proportions by the number of seats available does not deliver a neat result. Instead it produces unallocated or remainder seats and so-called "excess" votes when parties fall shy of gaining one more seat. 

Parties can enter into agreements whereby their excess votes are combined in order to secure some of those unallocated seats.

For any remaining unallocated seats, Israel uses the "Bader-Ofer method", similar to Europe's d'Hondt method, a mathematical formula which gives each remaining seat to the party with the highest average of votes per seat. This tends to reward larger parties.

The allocation of these seats played a decisive role in the last elections, when the equivalent of 300,000 ballots (six percent of the vote) were effectively redistributed.

Despite the near-parity between the two lists in terms of votes cast, Netanyahu's camp ultimately secured a comfortable majority of 64 seats thanks to the reallocation.

Electoral Mosaic 

The Israeli electorate is fragmented into multiple parties, with 38 lists competing this year, according to Central Elections Committee figures, though two have announced they are dropping out. 

Historic movements such as the right‑wing Likud and the left‑wing Labour Party, now renamed the Democrats, are flanked by lists representing, among others, ultra‑Orthodox Jews, citizens from the former Soviet bloc, the religious Zionist movement, and Druze and Arab voters.

Coalitions 

The large number of parties makes it virtually impossible for any single one to obtain the absolute majority of 61 seats needed to form a government. 
Once the ballots are counted, negotiations begin on forming a coalition.

The president, currently Isaac Herzog, is legally responsible for appointing the list leader best placed to form a coalition, based on recommendations submitted by the parties.

In 2021, after the fourth election in less than two years, Netanyahu failed to form a government.

It was Naftali Bennett who managed to become prime minister at the head of a varied coalition, even though his party had won just six seats in parliament.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)