Authors
Liran Harsgor, Alon Yakter, Yaniv Shapira
Publication date
2023/5/14
Journal
Multi-dimensional Measurements of Government (In) Stability” ISF workshop, Akko, Israel
Description
Combining democracy and conflict, Israel has long been an intriguing case study for political scientists studying electoral behavior. However, despite multiple changes in Israel and new explanations in the literature, our knowledge of Israeli voting patterns has not been updated since the early 2000s. Addressing this gap, this article focuses on two questions: do prior explanations of Israeli voting patterns still hold today? And do newer explanations add explanatory power to these baseline models? Drawing on election survey data from four decades (1981-2021), we find strong consistency in Israeli voting patterns over time. Regardless of various external changes, voting decisions are best predicted by attitudes about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and, to a lower extent, by secondary ideological issue-domains and religious and ethnic identities. Nevertheless, two newer factors, partisan polarization and personalized affect toward Benjamin Netanyahu, emerge as additional predictors of voting behavior in more recent years. Our findings deepen our understanding of voting patterns in Israel in the twenty-first century and underscore the stable significance of ethnonational conflicts for electoral alignments over time.
Total citations
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