Who will win Israeli general elections in February 2009?

This could be a SHOCKER.

Well I'll be......if WE are seeing a shift like this perhaps there is hope for a spiritual Israel after all.....

Please let this be one time HD gets it right.

Presently zippi is in front it looks like a repeat of previous perhaps this time she will be able to form a government with the labour party?

Okay...how's this one gonna play out?

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.....

Oh...it settles on who can form a government...

guess we have to wait to see who offers the better bribe to Lieberman.

The question was who will win election, not who will form government, it should be settled based on who one the election, and it has been finalized, Kadima wins.....http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29162395/

bibi won the election...those who vote for libermaqn voted for him...same as for the voters of the other right wing and religous

Settlement details read "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. "
It has to be settled after President Peres decided who he asks to form a government.

Agreed with Bernardo. Category editor please read settlement details. This question cannot be settled yet.

Hubdub is really starting to go down the drain. This is the second question I've seen in a week to be WRONGLY settled.
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.

This was one of those markets established before I came on board which I doubt I would have allowed due to the built-in contradiction. Yes, Livni *did* win the general election, as the title question asked, inasmuch as she's the leader of the party that won the most parliamentary seats. However, she has not yet been selected by Peres to form a new government. Peres has until February 25th to pick Livni or Netanyahu to become Prime Minister, and whoever he picks then has 42 days to form a government that must then win parliamentary approval before taking over.

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?

Sounds good to me.

@sqlman: "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... "

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).

sqlman, thanks for taking the time to understand the complexities of the Israeli election system :-)

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).

Sqlman, by your own statement, this was a poor question and very misleading. As you mention there is a self-contradiction within the question and settlement. The question should be 'Who would form the new government' not 'who won the election.' I think the fairest thing is to void the entire question, or if Netanyahu is picked PM have both those who picked Netanyahu and Livni settled as correct. But if you agree it is a poor question and misleading, you probably should void the question instead of making a choice between those who based their decision on the question and those who ignored the question and based their decision on the settlement information.

Bitakarma, in what sense has the leader of the biggest party "won" the elections? It is a "win" in the same sense that Al Gore won the elections against Bush :-) In the US the total number of voters doesn't actually determine the winner (and thus Al Gore did not become president), despite what you might think to be "common sense". Similarly in Israel the biggest party isn't necessarily the "winner" that gets to be the Prime-Minister. It is true that in all elections in Israel so far except one the biggest party always form the government (and thus won), but it is similarly true that in the US all presidents up to George Bush got got the most popular votes, not just the most electoral votes. The fact that it's usually the case doesn't make it the rule.

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".

"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. "

There is nothing unclear about those settlement details if one reads them and has a basic grasp of the English language.

@bernardo: lighten up, Francis. Don't they have humor where you're at? Sarcasm? Irony? Hyperbole? Juxtaposition? I know Israel politics at least as well as the next guy; I was attempting to poke a little fun at an electoral process which--by many, many journalistic accounts--can, as it has here, lead to a relatively confusing, lengthy, and difficult-to-determine outcome.

@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.

UPDATE 3/13: As we stated above, this will only resettle on Netanyahu if he’s able to build a government…and whether he’ll be able to do so is up in the air right now. Among other problems, neither the National Union or Jewish Home parties have given Bibi their support, and without them he won’t have the 61 seats needed for a majority in the chamber. Netanyahu needs to form a cabinet by next week; if he doesn’t, he’s expected to ask President Peres for an extension to April 3. (http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h9QUyYlf1w9lT26dHIUUfXm8vN7w)

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.

Ok, Netanyahu has formed a government, and was just sworn in as the new prime-minister yesterday. So is it *now* safe to say that Kadima didn't quite win the elections? :-)

@sqlman: "@bernardo: lighten up, Francis. [...]" The thing was, that you were actually making fun of your own misunderstanding and first it didn't seem to me like you meant it that way ;) Once you understood what "majority" means in all those dubious democracies we have around the world, there just isn't much substance left for (sober) jokes, if you want them to be appreciated. On the other hand, claiming victories after achieving the simple majority or even after not getting the most votes but simply a lot more than last time is quite professional if you look at the professionals around here.

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)

@bernardo? Huh? My "own misunderstanding"? No, I understood myself quite well. I do find it a bit presumptuous for someone lacking a well-developed sense of humor to declare that a bit of humor doesn't work for anyone just because they themselves can't understand it. Good humor works on many levels; this one apparently worked on too deep a level for you and--possibly--some others. C'est la vie...

:)

why are you so heavy handed with members it is certainly the way to lose them , by insulting them instead of letting it ride
as you say such is life

Don't worry, curios, I'm not thin-skinned.
@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...

Allow me to say this in closing then: Israel's elections are odd in that the winner of the election--that is, the candidate leading the party that received the most votes--is not actually considered the winner of that election. Now, if one can't see the irony and humor inherent in that, I don't know what to say. All I know is that I do find it funny. That's all I originally said, and that's all I'm saying now.

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. :)