Explaining the Israeli Voter

JNI


The 2009 election saw the ascension of the "Right wing" party-bloc, with Likud, Yisrael Beitenu, Shas, United Torah Judaism, National Union, and Bayit Hayehudi receiving 60% of the Jewish vote.1 Approximately 13% voted for parties of the Zionist Left. At the same time, statistics, studies, and voting results show that the Israeli electorate does not fit so neatly into convenient definitions of Right and Left. In 3 separate polls extending from after the ‘09 election till June 2010, between 55%-58% of Jewish Israelis supported the 2-state solution.2 What's more, almost 2/3 of those who consider themselves to be on the ‘Right’ side of the spectrum supported the 2-state solution. So how do we reconcile the supposedly contradictory opinions of the electorate? There are a few possible explanations.

The Sociological explanation
The Sociological approach to studying voter behavior (Lazarsfeld et al., 1944) posits that who we are determines who we vote for. According to this approach, political predispositions stemming from childhood, and factors like social status and religion, explain the voter's electoral decisions; and that these factors condition the voter, such that the voter's "political heritage" and community holds the key to understanding his vote (Wattenberg, 1995). Furthermore, the stronger the voter's social identity, the easier it is to predict his vote.

Though this approach is known to possess limited prediction power in most Western countries, this is not the case in Israel, where it accounts for 70% of voters; social cleavages like religion and ethnicity continue to accurately explain the Israeli electorate's voting patterns (Shamir & Arian, 1999). Thus, the level of religious observance is one of the most important socio-demographic predictors of Right or Left bloc affiliation (Shamir & Arian, 1999). And if a voter is religious, Mizrachi, and of low educational status, he is likely to vote for Likud; whereas a secular, Ashkenazi, and educated, he is likely to vote for Meretz.

Thus, on one level, the Israeli electorate is shifting Rightward simply because of demographics. The religious population is growing faster than the secular population, which translates to more votes being cast for the Right. Yet, there is a deeper explanation for the religious demographic voting en masse for the Right:

"The political cohesion of groups . . . is greater the more organized they are into exclusive and overlapping networks and associations whose internal structures are personalistic and hierarchical. Such conditions are normally not prevalent, and post-industrial societies with their atomizing influences are even less likely to produce them." (Shamir & Arian, 1995, 266).

Religious parties like Shas have been highly successful in developing social organizations and services that anchor voters to the party, thus obtaining a high level of voter loyalty and party identification. (Arian, 2005, 128). The same can be said of the recent wave of Russian immigrants, though to a lesser degree. The result is impressive electoral success for both Yisrael Beitenu and Shas (who received the 3rd and 4rth most votes in the ‘09 election, respectively).

On the other hand, secular Left-wing voters are not politically cohesive, and lack an organized set of beliefs that bind them together as one voting bloc. The "atomizing influences" of secularization, higher education and affluence diffuse their vote. As Yishai (1999) points out, there are certainly aspects of "post-materialist" politics in Israel. Highly correlated with affluence and secularism, “new politics” tend to signal an "end of ideology," where peace, prosperity and quality of life surmount nationalistic issues. Though Israel has attained a level of economic prosperity, the security situation restricts "post-material" politics from being a real force; yet its influence can be seen in the attitudes of the secular, educated demographic in Israel.

The Rational Behavior explanation
Rational Behavior theory applies economic theory assumptions of rationality to political decision-making (Downs, 1957). It is based on the assumption that people act rationally in politics, and that each citizen votes for the party he believes will maximize his benefit (Wattenberg, 1995). This model suggests that heuristics (information short-cuts) help the voter determine what is in his best interest by reducing information costs, as it is impossible for him to gather all the information necessary to make such a decision. Examples are ideology and a candidate’s performance in the recent past. Utilizing the latter heuristic, the voter ensures that unsuccessful policies are abandoned and successful policies are maintained.

Expressive v. Strategic voting

Since Israel is a multiparty coalition government system, the large parties are the inherent building blocks of any government, and this has a tendency to marginalize the smaller parties. Indeed, as Aldrich, et al. (2005) found, anticipated post-election coalition outcomes do influence Israeli voter decisions, and non-sincere voting is quite high. Whereas “expressive voters” vote for the party that best represents their views, citizens that consider potential coalition outcomes in casting their vote are “strategic voters.” That is, they do not vote for the party most resembling their politics, but try to “make their vote count” by influencing the composition of the likely coalition. Such considerations apply not only to voter intentions regarding which bloc to support, but also apply to voter intentions within a bloc. (Aldrich et al., 2005). So for many whose views in the ‘09 elections were best represented by Meretz, the poor showing predicted for Labor and Meretz encouraged them to vote for the Centrist Kadima, a party which, though not representative of the Meretz voter, was closer to his views than the other frontrunner (Likud), and had a far better chance of forming a government. Thus, the difference between expressive and strategic voters is likely the main reason that the Zionist Left only received 13% of the vote.

Another manifestation of strategic voting in Israel is the pattern of reactive voting (Shamir & Arian, 2002). In surveying the election history of the past 20 years, we find the incumbent consistently voted out of office (with one exception): 1992 – Left (Labor); 1996 – Right (Likud); 1999 – Left (Labor); 2001 – Right (Likud); 2003 - Right (Likud); 2006 – Center/left (Kadima); 2009 – Right (Likud). This pattern is consistent with the past-performance heuristic for arriving at a voting decision, and is closely related to the Responsibility Hypothesis, whereby voters hold the government responsible for economic events and votes accordingly (Lewis-Beck & Paldam, 2000); in Israel, “economic performance” can be replaced by “security situation.” But this anti-incumbent phenomena can also be explained by the fact that there is a higher level of risk-seeking when times are bad, and loss aversion when times are good; so that the incumbent has an advantage under normal or improving conditions, and the challenger has an advantage in bad times (Quattrone & Tversky, 1988). This explanation is also consistent with Sharon’s second election victory in 2003. Thus, in ‘09 it may have just been the Right’s turn.

Looking deeper, there emerges a consistent pattern where the electorate elects a candidate/party based on campaign statements and party platforms, only to have the government implement contradictory policies (Arian, 2005, 137): Labor’s ‘92 platform made no mention of the 2-state solution, yet Rabin signed the Oslo Agreement; In ‘96 Netanyahu said he would merely honor past agreements, yet he proceeded to sign the Hebron Protocol and the Wye River Memorandum; Barak campaigned on an uncompromising security and foreign policy platform in ‘99, yet proceeded to withdraw from Lebanon and almost concluded a comprehensive peace agreement; in ‘01 Sharon won the election on a promise to crush the second Intifada, which he did, but 4 years later he uprooted settlements and withdrew from Gaza; in ’06, Olmert and Kadima were elected on a platform of “Convergence,” but did not withdraw from any territory, and instead embarked on 2 wars; most recently, Netanyahu campaigned against establishing a Palestinian state, but 3 months after his election endorsed a Palestinian state. If “trust” is defined as the degree to which people perceive that the government is producing outcomes consistent with their expectations, then it is no wonder that voter trust and confidence is continually diminishing (Shamir & Arian, 2002). The lack of faith translates into perceived pointlessness of an expressive vote, and fosters more strategic voting.

The rise in disillusionment and decrease in political efficacy also increases the abstention rates. Coupled with the fact that there is a general decline in voter turnout in the West, this is another area where the Left suffers. Because the socio-demographic characteristics of the Left in Israel are essentially ‘Western,’ abstention is higher among the Left than the Right. Simply put, secular Jews in Israel abstain more than the religious (Shamir & Arian, 2002).

Spatial models

Spatial voting models attempt to predict how a citizen will vote based on the distance of his issue position from that of political parties on a given issue. Of all the spatial models, the discounting approach is the most consonant with Israeli voters’ cynicism and distrust. A mixture of the proximity and directional models, it posits that voters discount parties’ statements and platforms and choose the candidate who he perceives will implement policy closest to his “ideal point” (Merrill & Grofman, 1999). The voter essentially recalibrates parties’ stated positions to his expectation of their future performance in government, and then votes according to this adjusted positioning. But the fact remains that applying spatial models to Israel, the smaller parties are smaller than what we should expect, and larger parties are larger than we expect, and so spatial models lack the predictive power of other Rational Behavior models; and are proof that Israeli voters are not voting their preference, but voting strategically.

The Psychological model

The psychological model focuses on the strength of party identification on an individual level. Though it does not deny the importance of external social factors, it focuses on the non-rational sense of identification a voter has for a party, and the utility of party identification in filtering an individual’s view of the political world (Wattenberg, 1995, 16).

This model arguably serves to explain the voting behavior of many Labor voters from the establishment of the State of Israel (Mapai was Labor’s antecedent). It was the establishment party, ubiquitous in society and politics, and for many citizens a vote for Labor was a fait accompli. Starting after the Yom Kippur War, the reflexive nature of such a vote began to erode. By ’09, the party that once garnered 47 Knesset seats was reduced to 13. Due to the multiparty system electoral volatility was already high, but the loss of the one vestige of party identification has raised it to 60% and was a serious blow to the Left. The main vessel for a consolidated left-wing voting bloc was dismantled and its voters dispersed. Reflexive Labor voters became reflective voters. The shift Right, or perhaps better stated - the shift away from the Left, may partially be explained by the slow move away from Labor party identification.

The defectors from the Left bloc and the electorate's centrists

There are those in the Israeli electorate whose political attitudes are not driven by socio-demographic markers, nor religion or ideology, but rather pragmatism and the realities of the day. It follows that they are a volatile voting demographic, and often sway the elections. Viewing Oslo as a failure, they tend to be hawkish on security matters, and tend to vote for the Right, especially when the security situation worsens, as they see the Left as dubious on security. The correlation between a decreased sense of security and electoral successes for the Right was borne out in a study (Berrebi & Klor, 2006), which found that “terrorism escalates when the left-wing party is in office and decreases when the right-wing party takes over” (924) and that “it is an empirical fact that deterrence policies have an effect on fluctuations in terrorism” (904).