Blog 7 Israel

Blog 7

Duverger’s Law in Israel

Duverger’s Law states that in a plurality rule election system, the total effective number of parties should be two. A country that we can use to look at this is Israel, with Israel being a state that runs its elections for the legislature as a plurality rule system, with proportional distribution according to the d’Hondt method.
        In the Israeli elections held in 2009, there were 33 parties that were listed on the ballot, with Israel having a District Magnitude of 1, or in other words, Israel as one giant district. Out of those 33 parties that tried for election, below is a list of all of the parties that actually received seats from their votes in the election that took place.

Party		Votes	% Votes	Seats	+/–	% Seats
	Kadima	758,032	22.47%	28	−1	23.33%
	Likud	729,054	21.61%	27	+15	22.50%
	Yisrael Beiteinu	394,577	11.70%	15	+4	12.50%
	Labor Party	334,900	9.93%	13	–6	10.83%
	Shas	286,300	8.49%	11	–1	9.17%
	United Torah Judaism	147,954	4.39%	5	–1	4.17%
	United Arab List–Ta'al	113,954	3.38%	4	—	3.33%
	National Union	112,570	3.34%	4	[A]	3.33%
	Hadash	112,130	3.32%	4	+1	3.33%
	New Movement-Meretz	99,611	2.95%	3	–2	2.50%
	The Jewish Home	96,765	2.87%	3	[B]	2.50%
	Balad	83,739	2.48%	3	—	2.50%

       


















       
        While these were the only parties that received seats from the elections, all 33 parties were able to get votes. On another note, all of the parties that are not featured on this list all received less than 2% of the vote. That was bad for them, because in Israel there is a minimum threshold of 2%, meaning that all of the 21 other parties did not meet the threshold for their state.
         For a party to then fill the seats that they get from the voting that takes place, Israel has a closed lists system for filling the seats. This means that when people go to vote, they vote for a party list, not a person in the party. For each seat, the government starts at the top and then goes down the list to fill all of the seats that a party has received. Along with this, the Israeli government does not have any reserved seats for people of other ethnic backgrounds or gender, so all seats will be filled according to the closed list of the parties. Continuing with their closed lists, if for any reason there is a vacancy from a member of a party no longer being able to fulfill their duty, the seat will go to the next person in line from their party list.
       Now then, back to that table up at the top. We have already established that there are 33 parties in Israel, with 12 of them receiving enough votes to actually be effective in their last election. Let’s find out how many effective parties Duverger’s Law says that there should be. To do this, we will use a formula (the formula:  Neff=1/Σ(p2)) that says that the number of effective parties will equal one divided by the sum of the square of the percent of total votes each party received. Using lots of math and a very large table (attached at end of document), Duverger’s Law says that Israel should have about 6.97… Now, since having .97 of a party seems to be impossible, we can round it to 7. Using this, we can see that Israel does not support Duverger’s Law that there should only be 2 parties. Instead, for them, it would be most effective to have seven parties.

Works cited

Wikipedia. "Elections is Israel." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Israel.
Inter-Parliamentary Union. "Israel." http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2155_B.htm.

Party		Votes	% Votes	Seats	+/–	% Seats
	Kadima	758,032	22.47%	28	−1	23.33%
	Likud	729,054	21.61%	27	+15	22.50%
	Yisrael Beiteinu	394,577	11.70%	15	+4	12.50%
	Labor Party	334,900	9.93%	13	–6	10.83%
	Shas	286,300	8.49%	11	–1	9.17%
	United Torah Judaism	147,954	4.39%	5	–1	4.17%
	United Arab List–Ta'al	113,954	3.38%	4	—	3.33%
	National Union	112,570	3.34%	4	[A]	3.33%
	Hadash	112,130	3.32%	4	+1	3.33%
	New Movement-Meretz	99,611	2.95%	3	–2	2.50%
	The Jewish Home	96,765	2.87%	3	[B]	2.50%
	Balad	83,739	2.48%	3	—	2.50%
	The Green Movement–Meimad	27,737	0.82%	—	–1	—
	Gil	17,571	0.52%	—	–7	—
	Ale Yarok	13,132	0.39%	—	—	—
	The Greens	12,378	0.37%	—	—	—
	Yisrael Hazaka	6,722	0.20%	—	—	—
	Tzabar	4,752	0.14%	—	—	—
	Koah LeHashpi'a	3,696	0.11%	—	—	—
	Da'am Workers Party	2,645	0.08%	—	—	—
	Yisrael HaMithadeshet	2,572	0.08%	—	—	—
	Holocaust Survivors and Ale Yarok Alumni	2,346	0.07%	—	—	—
	Leader	1,887	0.06%	—	—	—
	Tzomet	1,520	0.05%	—	—	—
	Koah HaKesef	1,008	0.03%	—	—	—
	Man's Rights in the Family Party	921	0.03%	—	—	—
	HaYisraelim	856	0.03%	—	—	—
	Or	815	0.02%	—	—	—
	Ahrayut	802	0.02%	—	—	—
	Brit Olam	678	0.02%	—	—	—
	Lev LaOlim	632	0.02%	—	—	—
	Lazuz	623	0.02%	—	—	—
	Lehem	611	0.02%	—	—	—
Valid votes		3,373,490	98.74%
Invalid or blank votes		43,097	1.26%
Totals		3,416,587	100.00%	120	—	100.00%
Registered voters/turnout		5,278,985	64.72%