2015-03-18

Hard Right Turn Leads to Electoral Victory

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu ran a hard-right campaign in the latest election and was rewarded with a larger majority in parliament.

Hard-right shift delivers upset election win for Netanyahu
In the final days of campaigning, Netanyahu abandoned a commitment to negotiate a Palestinian state - the basis of more than two decades of Middle East peacemaking - and promised to go on building settlements on occupied land. Such policies defy the core vision of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict embraced by President Barack Obama and his Republican and Democratic predecessors.

With nearly all votes counted on Wednesday, Netanyahu's Likud had won 30 seats in the 120-member Knesset, comfortably defeating the center-left Zionist Union opposition on 24 seats. A united list of Israeli Arab parties came in third.

The result amounted to a dramatic and unexpected victory for Netanyahu - the last opinion polls published four days before the vote had shown Likud trailing the Zionist Union by four seats.
Electoral results fluctuate based on who is in power and current social mood, but the trend continues to favor traditionally right-wing issues. Parties that push into the "extreme" right (extreme being defined by the left-wing media) will have greater electoral success in the coming years. Losing an election for being too right-wing shouldn't concern because public mood will shift to the right in the intervening years. Parties that push hardest to the right will win larger victories in the future. This does not break down into traditional left and right though. Greece's Syriza, a union of socialist, Maoist and communist parties, is relying heavily on nationalism, which is traditionally right-wing. No matter who wins within the right-left dichotomy within a nation, the winner will likely have shifted to the right, or emphasized it's right-wing aspects, on the path to victory.

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