.
Commentary:
The soldiers, diplomatic corp., etc. votes, counted last on Thursday and previously thought to alter the Knesset seat distribution, was added to the to the other 99% of the vote and turned out to be inconsequential to the outcome.
The quote above, included in the headline; “The Right-Wing won but Likud lost” is a parody from Moshe Feiglin on one of THE all-time classic post-election epitaphs which was uttered by Shimon Peres in explaining how Binyamin Netanyahu squeeked past him in the 1996 elections:
“The Jews won and the Israelis lost”
There will be more on Moshe Feiglin’s post-election thoughts in a subsequent post. Suffice to say that the distribution of Knesset seats remained the same as the vote became official on Thursday Evening. MB
Soldiers’ Votes do Not Alter Results, Rebecca Anna Stoil (Jerusalem Post)
Excerpts:
The final surprise of the elections turned out to be the lack of change on Thursday as the double-sealed ballots revealed that unlike in previous years, soldiers’ votes did not pull the Knesset rightward.
Whereas in the past, Arab parties tended to lose a mandate and Center-Right parties like Likud tended to gain one, the late-counted ballots this time did not change the distribution of Knesset seats or break the deadlock.
Final Election Results In; No Change, by Aviad Glickman (Ynet)
Feiglin: Netanyahu Lost and Should be Replaced
Vote-counters noted that among the ballots cast by soldiers, captive IDF soldier St.-Sgt. Gilad Schalit’s name appeared on dozens of write-in white ballots, whereas others voiced their general discontent by writing messages such as “Nobody” or “They’re all liars.”
In addition to 700 polling stations at IDF and Border Police bases, double envelopes from 194 hospital polling stations, 1,319 stations for the disabled, 92 at embassies and consulates overseas and 56 in prisons all were tallied on Thursday and added to the totals recorded on Tuesday and early Wednesday.
The Central Elections Committee said Thursday evening that a total of 3,373,490 legal ballots had been tallied, after committee employees weeded out blank ballots, illegal ballots, and ballots that had been placed in envelopes together with other ballots.
According to the committee’s computations, each mandate was worth 27,246 votes. One party – The Green Movement-Meimad – technically had enough votes to pick up a mandate, garnering 27,737 votes, or around 0.8 percent of the valid votes cast; however, it fell short of the 2% minimum required to enter the Knesset.
None of the other small parties came close, with the Gil Pensioner’s Party edging out the Green Leaf Party by 4,000 votes for the dubious title of second-largest loser.