Abstract
The tenure of the longest-serving Israeli Prime Minister, the incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu, was temporarily interrupted as a result of the Knesset election in 2021. The party that succeeded in forming a government was the relatively new and rising center party Yesh Atid. The objective of this study is to demonstrate that the center parties gained seats by taking away them from left-wing parties, particularly Labor. For this purpose, I analyzed historical data on election results, such as the number of seats, share of votes, and raw polling data from the Israel National Election Studies (INES) using Stata statistical software. I calculated the percentages of votes for the right, left, and center parties as groups, showing that the center parties gained seats when Labor lost them and lost seats when Labor gained them. This suggests that the center parties expanded their election base at the expense of Labor. My analysis shows that 50% of those who voted for the Zionist Camp led by Labor in 2015 voted for the Blue and White list of Yesh Atid in 2019. Why then do center parties take votes away from the left? One reason for this is the decreasing support for peace with Palestinians and normalization with Arab countries, which were Labor’s major achievements.
