Voting as if Their Lives Depend on It

Editor’s Note: This column was filed on Oct. 26, the day before the Israeli election.

Israelis and Americans are voting as if their lives depend on it.

As this column went to press on Oct. 27, Israel was counting the votes cast that day for election of the next Knesset.

The election will determine which party gets the first call to form a majority coalition in the 120-seat Knesset (the Hebrew word for “assembly”).

That, in turn, will determine who heads the government (the cabinet) — in short, whether Benjamin Netanyahu continues as prime minister or is succeeded by the leader of an opposition party.

At the same time, Americans were one week away from the Nov. 3 midterm election, which will determine control of the U.S. House and Senate — and the degree of obedience or resistance that President Donald Trump can expect during his last two years in office.

Despite his previous harsh comments about Netanyahu, Trump belatedly endorsed the Likud party leader, whose three terms as prime minister include 15 of the past 17 years.

A generation of Israelis has grown up virtually not knowing anyone else as their nation’s leader.

The election was a referendum on Netanyahu’s tenure — particularly, but certainly not limited to — accountability for the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 men, women, and children and the kidnapping of 251 more, and prosecution of the war in Gaza.

Tens of thousands of Israelis in the United States — including from Metro Atlanta — flew to Israel to vote. Aside from diplomatic personnel and employees of Israeli agencies, voting in-country is required.

Since the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948, no single party has formed a majority without bringing in partners — and those parties come with demands of their own in exchange for their support.

A party must receive 3.25 percent of the nationwide vote to enter the Knesset. The mathematical formulas that determine the final allocation of seats defy explanation here.

Within a week of the election, Israel’s president will give the leader of one party 28 days to create a majority, plus another 14 if needed. If that fails, the leader of another party may be asked to try.

If still unsuccessful, the president could ask the new Knesset to approve a candidate or call for new elections. The Oct. 27 election was the sixth since 2019.

A “unity government,” comprised of opposing factions, is considered unlikely if Netanyahu is involved.

Some 20 percent of Israeli citizens are Arabs and, while Arab-led parties have served in the Knesset, only once has an Arab party joined a government (the cabinet), and that lasted only a year. Polls suggest that this year Arab parties could claim upwards of 15 seats. An opposition coalition might need their support to form a Knesset majority, a prospect generally opposed by Zionist parties.

The current government is considered the most right-wing in Israeli history.

Netanyahu’s cabinet includes Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was considered too politically extreme to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, but now is national security minister, and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, a champion of expanding West Bank settlements and the “voluntary emigration” of Gaza’s Palestinian population. The government also includes Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parties, whose support hinges on large subsidies for their communities, even as they discourage military service — a combination that rankles war-weary Israelis.

Turnout will be critical for opposition parties in both Israel and the United States.

Seventy percent of eligible Israelis voted in the 2022 election and a similar figure is anticipated this year.

Turnout in the 2022 U.S. midterm was roughly 47 percent nationwide, but closer to 52 percent in Georgia. In the 2024 presidential election, turnout was 64 percent nationally and 68 percent in Georgia.

A survey of 800 self-identified Jewish American voters conducted Aug. 26 to Sept. 1 for the Jewish Voters Resource Center, asked respondents to name their two most important issues. Cost-of-living/affordability and the future of democracy topped the list, followed, in order, by antisemitism, healthcare, and Israel.

“Israel” as an issue choice could mean anything from polls that show a softening of support for Israel among American voters to the future of Israel as a Jewish and democratic nation to a spike in antisemitism that some link how Israel has prosecuted the war in Gaza — and much more.

The pace of early voting in Georgia — which ends on Oct. 30 — is running well ahead of the 2022 midterm, the increase most notable in counties won by Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

By Oct. 25, more than 1.78 million Georgians — 23.6 percent of active voters — had cast ballots; more than 95 percent in-person and the remainder by absentee ballots.

According to the secretary of state’s office, 50 percent of the early votes were cast by white Georgians and 30 percent by Blacks. Women cast 55 percent of those votes. By age, turnout was strongest among those 60 to 64, trailed closely by the 65 to 69 group.

Georgians clearly are invested in how their state and country will be governed come January.

Israel’s election is of great interest to Jewish Americans and the U.S. House and Senate votes are of great interest to Israelis.

In both countries, people are voting as if their lives depend on the outcome.

Which, indeed, they may.