
Who will win Israeli general elections in February 2009?
Settlement details:As reported by a major mainstream news source.
the one who wins will be the one who manages to form a goverment under his command and not the leader of the biggest party.
Please read the comment regarding a possible resettlement.
| Zippi Livni - Kadima |
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| Binyamin (Bibi) Netnayahu - Likud |
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| Ehud Barak - Avoda |
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- Activity: H$67,081 |
- Predictions: 167 |
Comments: 25
Suspend date: Tue 10th Feb 1:59pm PST
Settlement date: Wed 1st Apr 4:58am PST
Prediction cut-off: Predictions on this question after Tue 10th Feb 1:59pm PST have been voided because they were made after the question could be settled
Initial likelihoods: Zippi Livni - Kadima: 40%, Binyamin (Bibi) Netnayahu - Likud: 40%, Ehud Barak - Avoda: 20%
Action history:
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-02-13-voa30.cfm
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSJER000057
et al.
Suspend date: Tue 10th Feb 1:59pm PST
Settlement date: Wed 1st Apr 4:58am PST
Prediction cut-off: Predictions on this question after Tue 10th Feb 1:59pm PST have been voided because they were made after the question could be settled details
Predictions (167)
Comments (25)
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Please let this be one time HD gets it right.
Is this based on who takes the most VOTES or who actually can form the largest working party and gets the PM position?
There's a good chance Kadima WINS this but is not selected.....
guess we have to wait to see who offers the better bribe to Lieberman.
It has to be settled after President Peres decided who he asks to form a government.
The case here is crystal clear: the question says that "the one who wins will be the one who manages to form a goverment under his command and not the leader of the biggest party. ". In what universe has Zipi Livni formed a goverment? She hasn't yet, and isn't likely to succeed to do so for at least a couple more weeks. And in fact it is very far from certain that she, and not her opponent Netanyahoo (with the bigger supporting block) will succeed in doing so.
In short, I'm glad I didn't have a lot riding on this question which was so WRONGLY settled.
To me, this would be as though Obama had won, but then McCain had been allowed to fill all the cabinet posts. And some people think America's Electoral College system is messy...
Anyway, I digress. Here's what we'll do to be fair:
1) To abide by the part of the settlement details that states "the one who wins will be the one who manages to form a goverment under his command", we'll wait until the 42 days after Peres picks the PM to give that person the chance to form that government.
2) If Livni is picked for PM *and* goes on to form a government by the end of the 42 days, the settlement will remain as-is.
3) If Netanyahu is picked for PM and goes on to form a government by the end of the 42 days, the market will be re-settled with Netanyahu as winner.
4) If whoever is picked for PM--Livni or Netanyahu--fails to form a government, the settlement will be determined based on what Peres decides at that time.
fair enough, everyone?
It's pretty chat-in-the-pub-like to mix up the simplicity of a majority vote system with it's democratic qualities in that ignorant way. Since "winning" an election isn't that easy in a multi-party system it's inevitable to clarify what you mean by that. Especially in Israel, where Kadima now has a following of less than 15% of eligible voters (22,5% at 64,5% turnout).
But it isn't actually all that complicated, and it makes sense if you assume that you don't have just two parties (as in the US), but more. Let me give you a simplified example. Imagine that a country has three parties, one left-wing party who got 34% of the votes, and two right-wing parties who got 33% of the votes each. The simplistic "biggest party wins" would have meant in this example that the left will govern, despite 66% of the voters preferring the right. This would not be very fair, would it? So the system in Israel is that it isn't a single party that forms a government, but rather a collection of parties that together got more than 50% of the vote. In this example, the two right-wing parties that see eye-to-eye would form a "coalition" and rule together, while what was the biggest party is left out of the government. It is very hard to call this biggest party a "winner" - it only got a third of the votes, and it didn't form a government. The "winner" is obviously the party who will form the new government (with other parties as partners) and will serve as its prime-minister. This is what the question's text clarified for people who are not versed in Israeli elections.
The current situation is similar to the above example, by the way. The (under some definition) left-wing Kadima got 23% of the votes, while the right-wing Likkud got 22% of the votes. You need 50% of the votes to form a government, so neither party is even close to forming a government without other parties. So who wins now depends on what other parties got elected. And in the current case, the right wing parties got more votes (around 55%) so it is quite possible that the right-wing Likkud will form the goverment, and thus "win the elections", despite not being the biggest party.
By the problem with the Israeli election system is that it almost encourages small parties. While in the early years of Israel the biggest party often got close to 50% of the votes, in recent elections no party got more than around 20% of the votes, and sometimes as many as 5 parties form a government together, with a lot of mess and often the government is very unstable and collapses forcing a new election (like we had now, after 3 years instead of 4).
The title of the question was indeed a bit unclear, especially to non-Israelis, but this is *exactly* why the author of the question wrote a clarification for the question. The clarification doesn't make the question more "misleading" or "contradictory", but rather more clear! It should be obvious that when the clarification explains exactly what "winning" means (and what it doesn't mean), you're not supposed to invent your own meaning of "winning".
the one who wins will be the one who manages to form a goverment under his command and not the leader of the biggest party. "
There is nothing unclear about those settlement details if one reads them and has a basic grasp of the English language.
@bitkarma: There were a (large) number of markets established in the transition from the previous category editor to myself; were I to void every one that wasn't worded exactly as I would have like it, there wouldn't be much on which to wager. :)
@nyharel: Excellent summation (although Bush wasn't the first to become president despite failing to acquire the majority of the popular vote; that also happened with Hayes in 1876 and Harrison 1888).
@drzinternet: please refer to comment #11.
IOW, if Bibi can get it done next week, we'll resettle on him; if he’s granted the extension, we’ll wait until the new deadline to decide whether to leave things as-is, or to re-settle on him.
And something about humor that comes to my mind, although it doesn't fit exceptionally well: The more serious the topic, the better the joke must be. (for the audience not feeling unwell)
:)
as you say such is life
@sqlman: It seems like we have communication difficulties concerning "misunderstanding" :) I meant that you seemed to make fun of the outcome 'cause you didn't realize in the first place that a simple majority isn't a "win" by kind of saying "Haha, but it's a strange electoral system, isn't it.." I don't know - and actually Im not interested in picking a sentence to pieces which wasn't really meant to be serious or funny. Like the mother of a friend once said: Such is life and everyday it gets sucher...
Also: as originally stated, this question--a leftover from the previous World editor--asks two different things: 1) Who will win the general election? 2) Who will manage to form a government and become PM? As it turned out, of course, there were two separate answers...which is why all those who lost with the original settlement because they'd made wagers on the party that didn't win the election were appeased with a re-settlement in favor of the party that lost that election.
Are we squared away?
@curios: relax, friend. I was neither heavy-handed nor insulting. If so, I apologize to bernardo--though I imagine if his skin's even a tenth as thick as mine, he's not bothered in the least. :)
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