Two weeks left. Do you already have a clear picture of what is going to happen here on November 1st? We tried to answer this question through an analysis of several thousand predictions that you filled out – you and yours – as part of the index’s election prediction game and here are the news. You have another chance to join it, or to update a previous forecast, to make us more accurate for election day. But in the meantime, we will show you what has accumulated so far, how it is similar and how it is different compared to the surveys, how it indicates wishes, where it reveals the biases of all of us.
It’s time to try to predict the election results – come participate in the forecast
After the holidays are already here: what will happen to us in the year 2018? We will see you contract
what did we do Simple thing: we divided all predictions according to actual vote. That is, according to the question of who the forecasters voted for in the previous elections (Likud voters are Likud voters, state camp voters are Blue and White and New Hope voters, and so on). Then we looked at the average of the mandates that voters of different parties give to other parties. That is – how many mandates do Yesh Atid voters think religious Zionism will have, compared to how many mandates do religious Zionist voters think Lish Atid will have. In the table attached here, we will not show all the predictions of all the voters of the parties, but will content ourselves with the voters of the four big ones, according to the polls: Likud, Yesh Atid, the state camp, religious Zionism. What do all these predict – on average – will happen in the elections.
If there is a title for this test, it is easy to recognize: the gaps in the forecast are large. Eight mandates separate what the Likud voters contract for the Netanyahu bloc and what the Yesh Atid voters contract for the Netanyahu bloc. How does that happen? The average polls of the index give the bloc (as of today) a little more than 60. Likud voters add a little more than three mandates to it, Yesh Atid voters subtract a little more than four mandates from it. Which of them lives in the movie? We will know that only after the elections. Right now, the reality seen in the forecast is simple reality. Coalition voters think that Netanyahu will not have a government. The opposition voters think that Netanyahu will have a government.
Where are the mandates that will decide? A significant number of them are in Likud. The gap in the Likud mandate forecast is the largest. Yesh Atid voters give their opponents only 31 mandates, a mandate less than what is in the polls. Likud voters give their party more than 36 mandates. They probably don’t trust the reviewers. A smaller gap in the number of mandates, but greater in relation to the size of the party is evident in relation to religious Zionism.
By the way, it is interesting that currently the voters of all parties give religious Zionism fewer mandates than it has in the polls. This is true even in relation to the voters of religious Zionism. Maybe they don’t believe what they see, maybe they prefer to remain pessimistic so as not to be disappointed. Be that as it may, three and a half mandates separate the highest and the lowest forecast of mandates for religious Zionism. Add a gap of 5 (Likud) and another gap of 3 (religious Zionism) and you get a gap of 8 mandates for the Netanyahu bloc. What about other parties? Either there is no big gap (the ultra-orthodox, the Arabs), or there is a gap that is offset (Yesh Atid and the state camp).
What can be learned from all this? First of all, that the public understands that the battle is close. Apparently, his predictions indicate the opposite. Likud voters predict a Likud victory, Yesh Atid voters predict a Yesh Atid victory. But that’s exactly the point: if there was a clear picture, let’s say, if the polls showed a picture of 55 mandates for the Netanyahu bloc, the right-wing voters would also align themselves according to reality. If the polls showed a picture of 65 mandates for the Netanyahu bloc, the voters of the center would also understand that the battle was probably decided. But in a close-fought situation, voters have the freedom to produce a forecast that better suits their political tastes. Those who think that the polls are slightly wrong upwards in favor of the bloc (Yesh Atid voters, and this is a figure that will be examined elsewhere, assume that the Arabs will come to vote at a higher rate than currently predicted), those who think that the polls are slightly wrong downwards to the detriment of the bloc (Shas voters, for example, contract their party a mandate More, on average, because they assume that the polls are always biased against Shas).
What else can be learned from the test? Only a few voters believe in the chance of Shaked, Zalika, Mokhtar and all the others who gather below the blocking percentage. Voters of most parties predict on average that no “other” party will pass the threshold. Former right-wing voters gave other parties, and this includes Shaked, an average of 2 mandates. That is, most of them predicted that there would not be four mandates for any other party, including the Jewish Home.
and what else? that the voters of most parties find it difficult to believe that Hadash-Ta’al is dangerously close to the percentage of blocking. This is what the pollsters say, this is what emerges from the numbers in the last two weeks – the Arab party is close to the red line, sometimes from above, sometimes from below. No reviewer has yet lowered it below the blocking percentage, but some were not very far from such a step, because the numbers were really borderline. On the other hand – non-polling voters have a much more optimistic forecast than Odeh and Tibi’s point of view. Likud voters expect 5 mandates, Yesh Atid voters approach 6, Ra’am voters also expect almost 6, and Meretz voters and Shas voters expect 5. In fact, there are no voters of any party in the forecast who expect the former partner less than -5 mandates. It is worth seeing what will happen to the party both in the polls and in the average of the predictions in the remaining two weeks.
Last note: in the previous round of elections, the surfers’ forecast was much more sympathetic to the right-wing bloc than the actual results. The polls predicted (correctly) that it would be very difficult for Netanyahu to form a coalition. The surfers predicted (incorrectly) that Netanyahu would be able to form a coalition, and not with much difficulty. This time, the forecast mode is different. This time the predictions (now we are talking about the average of all the predictions) are quite similar to the polls, and if anything, they give the right wing a little less than the polls. It’s an interesting change.