Will Israeli Politicians Learn Election's Lessons?

On the Right, the results were an object lesson in the perils of short-changing democracy. And on the Left, they were an object lesson in what responsible voting can accomplish.

...Likud... lost seats by scorning their voters. ...The drop was particularly dramatic: It shrank 25 percent in a mere two months, from a high of 36 seats in a poll taken the day after its primary to 27 seats in the election. All these seats clearly migrated rightward, since the overall rightist-religious bloc did not shrink. And that is the key to understanding what happened.

Likud's primary produced a list attractive to rightists; hence many who had deserted the party in 2006 initially returned. But then, in a disgraceful and anti-democratic move instigated by chairman Binyamin Netanyahu, party institutions reordered the slate's reserved slots three days after the primary to demote some of the hawks and promote left-leaning candidates, as Netanyahu wanted a "centrist" list. And disgusted rightists, unwilling to support a party whose leader so clearly did not want them, jumped ship.

...Primary voters... read the political map more accurately than Netanyahu. He thought the battle was over the Center, so he wanted a list that would appeal to Kadima voters. But the battle turned out to be over the Right - and primary voters had given him precisely the list he needed to win it. Thus had he honored their will, he would now head a larger, stronger faction and be better placed to form a stable, functional government.

Instead, he woke up only belatedly, as Likud's edge over Kadima in the polls steadily narrowed even though Kadima was also shrinking. He then tried to break right, but it was too late: Rightists refused to vote for someone who had shown them the door just two months earlier. Hence he is now in an impossible situation: Instead of being the obvious candidate to form a government, Tzipi Livni is in position to challenge him, enabling smaller parties to launch an extortionate bidding war.

THERE is the lesson of Kadima. According to pollster Rafi Smith, fully 40% of Kadima's voters chose it just days before the election. They came overwhelmingly from the Left: Smith says Kadima took one-third of Labor's voters and even more of Meretz's. And they came for one reason only: As the gap between Likud and Kadima in the polls narrowed, leftists realized that supporting Kadima offered their only hope of forming the next government. So they held their noses and did so. As one such voter told Ha'aretz: "For years I've voted Meretz, but this year, since I'm no great fan of Netanyahu, I decided to vote for Tzipi Livni. I think her party is atrocious... but I had no choice... she's the only answer to Netanyahu."

The results are unfortunate: a Netanyahu-Livni stalemate in which neither can easily form a government. But given that Netanyahu had for months appeared unstoppable, it was a stunning achievement, and it very nearly succeeded. Had Kadima beaten Likud by somewhat more than a mere one seat, Livni's claim to be the people's choice might have been convincing.

....Even if Netanyahu manages to form a coalition - which is still uncertain, given Kadima's ability to play spoiler - a government comprising six separate factions, with... no one party large enough to dominate, will be too dysfunctional to do anything useful and will ultimately collapse prematurely.

These, then, are the election's lessons: Give the voters a say, honor their will after doing so, and unite behind a party that could actually form a government instead of dissipating your electoral power among numerous small factions. And if Israelis learn them, our political system may even start producing governments capable of governing.