The ethnic vote in Israel's 1981 elections

Abstract

A fascinating result of the 1981 elections in Israel was the acceleration of the process of competitiveness between the two major parties and an increased polarization along ethnic lines within the electorate. While the latter phenomenon is the major subject for our discussion, it cannot be detached from the other political developments characterizing the Israeli political and party system. We will therefore briefly sketch these processes and then proceed to analyse the ethnic factor in the elections. The only blemishes in the purity of Israel's single-constituency, fixed-list system are the one-per cent minimum required for the first seat and the distribution of the surplus votes which has been done by the d 'Hondt formula since 1973. At the same time, the tendency is clearly toward greater concentration of the vote in the two largest parties, especially since 1965 (see Table 1). This has not prevented the number of competing lists reaching a record 31 in the 1981 elections. Only 10 won representation; the other 21 gathered among them 5.2 per cent of the vote. The growth of the two-party share coincides with another phenomenon. Since 1965, the two big winners have been amalgamations of two or more parties, setting up a joint list. In 1965, as a reaction to the split in Mapai caused by the setting up of Raft by Ben Gurion, Dayan, Peres, Navon and others, the old-time Mapai leaders formed an electoral coalition with Ahdut Haavoda in order to avoid disaster. By 1968 Raft, Mapai and Ahdut Haavoda had formed the Labor party and in 1969 Labor joined Mapam in the present Alignment. Meanwhile the Right and Center Herut and Liberals were forming an electoral bloc for the 1965 elections, one that was expanded in 1973 under the pressure of Sharon and with the acquiescence of Begin in forming the Likud. 1 The appearance of a break-away third party has tempered the trend of two-party vote concentration. In 1965 Raft won 10 seats and in 1977 the Democratic Movement for Change won 15. Most of these votes were at the expense of the Alignment; without their appearance the trend line would be even sharper. A related trend line which cannot be doubted is the growth of the Likud. Whereas it might be the case that the ascension of the Likud in 1977 was due to the votes taken from the Alignment by the DMC, it was clear that the surprise of May 1977 was in the timing rather than in the very fact of the Likud's victory. By 1981 the race between the Likud and the Alignment was very close; between them they won almost a million and a half votes of the almost two million cast, but only 10,405 votes was the difference between them. Within the Jewish population the Likud