The Israeli elections may not result in the formation of a coalition government

Jimmy DeYoung

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JD: What’s the lay of the land right now? How does it look for both the Liberal party and the Right Wing party? And how the elections will come out on Tuesday?

WM: Well Jimmy first of all let’s remind our listeners that Israel has a Parliamentary proportional representation system in which the entire country is one voting district. It’s quite different from the United States of course. That being the case no one party is ever and is never expected actually to gain the 61 votes majority out of the 120 seat Knesset. Therefore we always have coalition politics from 2 to 7 parties sometimes joining up together to form a majority. The majority could reach into the 80’s sometimes in which then the Prime Minister can present to the President saying, “I have a majority” and he get to set up the government which is then voted in in the first Knesset session available.

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