Elections Take 2: Game Theory analysis

It's election time, take 2. For those who have joined us late, here's a TL;DR of the situation:

Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!

Ok, here's a little more detail:

Israel had elections on 9 April 2019. Even though the "right wing" bloc had comfortably enough seats to form a government, Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beitenu) decided that he would not sit in any government with the Haredi parties. His 5 seats were required for a majority, so Likud's Binyamin Netanyahu could not form a coalition without involving parties to his left, and none of those parties were interested. So rather than allowing Benny Gantz of Kachol Lavan (Blue & White) to have a chance at forming a coalition, Netanyahu had the 21st Knesset dissolve itself, and new elections were called for 17 September.

Netanyahu was hoping that the outcome of the next election will make it easier for him to form a coalition. So, how's that working out so far? As it turns out, very well for Liberman, not so well for Netanyahu. As always, Israel is obsessed with polls, of which several get published every week. For the purposes of this discussion, I'll work with the poll showing the most optimistic numbers from Netanyahu's perspective, which I lifted off the Yisrael Hayom website:

Credit: Yisrael Hayom

This Channel 12 poll from 3 August shows Netanyahu with a total of 57 seats, if you exclude Yisrael Beitenu. And as I said, that's the most optimistic one for him. If the polls are accurate, Netanyahu still has no path to a right-wing coalition, unless Liberman suddenly decides that he's willing to climb down from his anti-Haredi tree. And why should he, seeing as his hardline stand seems to have literally doubled his support? No, Liberman has found what he thinks is a winning formula, and he will stick with it.

What about Gantz? Could he form a centre/left coalition? Here the answer is an even clearer No. His problem is the hate map among his prospective partners. It's like this: The Democratic Camp (heir to Meretz) won't sit with the Haredim. Nor will Liberman. And if there's anyone Liberman hates more than the Haredim, it's the Arabs. And even if he could be persuaded to sit with the Arabs, the United Arab List is too stuck in their anti-Zionist rejectionism, and under their current leadership, will not join any Israeli government. Gantz's optimal non-conflicting coalition is B&W, Labour, Shas, and UTJ, for a grand total of 50 seats. It's not happening for him.

So, back to Netanyahu - how else could he form a coalition? Well, logically speaking, if he can't do it with parties to his right, then he'll have to turn to his left. He has two realistic options here: B&W and Labour. Each has its advantages and disadvantages.

B&W is closer to Likud politically than Labour. A Likud/B&W coalition could potentially form a government without involving any smaller parties. If they need to bring in anyone else, Ayelet Shaked would be the obvious choice. Not Liberman, because I suspect Netanyahu would want to punish him for getting us all into the mess in the first place. Plus, he's shown himself to be an unreliable coalition partner in the past.

The biggest problem with B&W is that they will come with a big asking price, most likely a rotation deal for Prime Minister. And Netanyahu most certainly does not want to give up his job. That will be a deal breaker, in my opinion.

Labour, on the other hand, has embarrassingly little bargaining power, and cannot come with huge demands. If they ask too much, they will get nothing. I can easily see a situation where Netanyahu offers Amir Peretz some obscure post like the Welfare Ministry, and maybe something else peripheral like Agriculture for one of his cronies, in order to sit in the government. Peretz has two choices: a nice ministerial salary to see him comfortably into his retirement, or the glorious distinction of being the leader of the smallest faction in the Opposition. Whichever path he chooses, Labour will kick him out as leader before the next election (as appears to be their custom), so he really has nothing to lose. He'll come up with some rationalization about why he's joining a right-wing/Haredi government, and jump on the gravy train, as befits a good socialist. And that is Netanyahu's path to 61.

Now, you might think we're done here. But this is just where the fun begins. It's time to play Rational Pirates! BUWAHAHAHAHAAA!

Arrr! Shiver me timbers!

Of course, I'm referring to the famous Pirate Game, and if you don't know what that is, you should visit the link. I'm casting Netanyahu and Gantz as the Rational Pirates in our story.

Netanyahu knows he has a path to 61, as described above. But it has its problems. He needs five parties, including his own Likud, in his coalition, they all have their agendas pulling in different directions, and any one of the other four could bring down the government at the drop of a hat. Make that five other parties, since Yamina is just a technical bloc, and once they're in the Knesset they can function independently as the New Right and Bayit Yehudi. Running a government that is constantly beholden to the demands of five other coalition partners will not be easy. Wouldn't it be nice if he could just have one big partner--Blue & White--and not have to bother with those pesky little nudnik parties? If necessary, he could just pull in one other small party, maybe New Right, maybe Bayit Yehudi, to make his 61.

But Gantz wants a rotating Prime Minister position! "Well," Netanyahu can tell him, "I don't need you to form a government. I already have my path to 61, with Labour. But I'd prefer to work with you. We're not that far apart on most issues of substance, and together we can make a coalition that is not beholden to the whims of smaller parties, for the greater good of Israel! Rotating premiership is off the table, but you can have the Defense Ministry and even the Foreign Ministry. Of course, if you'd prefer to be the Leader of the Opposition instead for the next four or five years, that's fine...but chaval al hazman..."

Now Gantz has a quandary. He's made a lot of pronouncements about refusing to join a coalition with Netanyahu. But this really is a great opportunity to form the government that Middle Israel desperately wants. Free from the political demands of the Left and Right fringes; unencumbered by the budgetary needs of the Haredim. How will history remember him? As yet another Opposition leader who never made any impact? Or as the hero who put aside his personal differences with his political opponents, for the greater good?

Gantz nods sagely, then extends his hand to Netanyahu. "You've got a deal," he says. And this is how a coalition is formed between Blue & White, and maybe one other small party.

Alternative scenario: Zehut and Otzma Yehudit pass the threshold

All the above assumes that the smaller ring-wing parties, Zehut and Otzma Yehudit, fail to pass the 3.25% voting threshold. But what if they do? They immediately arrive on the scene with 4 seats each. Those 8 seats will come more or less proportionately off the rest of the parties. Let's say everyone else on that poll loses 1 seat, other than the Arab List (just for argument's sake). Now Netanyahu technically has a path to 61 with just right-wing parties: 29 Likud, 11 Yemina, 6 Shas, 7 UTJ, 4 Zehut, 4 Otzma. But it doesn't really change much from our previous scenario, where Labour filled in the gap; in fact, the optics of forming a coalition with the Kahanists are so bad that Netanyahu would arguably prefer to have Labour in the coalition rather than Otzma. Plus, he hates Moshe Feiglin of Zehut. So it's back to the Rational Pirates game, with pretty much the same inputs as before.

So it seems all roads lead to the same outcome: a Likud/Blue & White coalition, with Netanyahu as Prime Minister.

Of course, anything could happen in the next month, and the seat distribution could be wildly different from current polling. We'll take a look at that after 17 September. See you then!

Credit: Jpost

Election fun!

Seven talking points about the election on April 9

A lot of people are talking about how disillusioned they are about next week's general election in Israel, how no party really deserves their vote, and how bad and dangerous certain candidates or parties are. I have a different take on things that is a lot more upbeat. Here are seven talking points for your consideration.

1. The polls are (mostly) rubbish

One of the best things that has come out of this election is the legal ruling obtained by the Green Leaf Party early in the campaign, requiring (among other things) that polling companies release their raw data, not just their final calculations. While most of the media doesn't report on the raw data anyway, it's available, and extremely interesting. 

For example, I present you with Exhibit A, the raw data from a Channel 13 poll taken on 28 March:

The leftmost column is the percentage of respondents who chose the selected option; the middle column is the number of seats they are allocated, based on their raw data. Loosely. Very loosely.

The first thing I will draw your attention to is the contrast between the results of UTJ and the New Right. In the raw data, UTJ scored 3.8%, while NR got 3.7%: a virtual dead heat. Yet in the allocation of seats, UTJ gets 7, while NR gets only 5! Now, this is not necessarily gross misrepresentation; after all, UTJ supporters are particularly difficult to poll, since very many of them do not use the Internet, and do not have SMS-capable phones, so it is probably correct to bump their numbers up somewhat. But how much? That's a question for the judgement of the pollsters.

Where it gets a little more dodgy is how Likud (21.6%) and Blue & White (25.5%) both ended up with exactly 30 seats. Or how Zehut (7.5%) and Labour (7.8%) were allocated 7 and 10 seats respectively. I suspect the pollsters are taking the 9.1% of "Undecideds" and allocating them to other parties according to their best judgement. Or according to their own political preferences. Or according to groupthink. Whatever. Whether the data manipulation is innocent or nefarious, it's pretty clear that polling is not an exact science. Expect results that are nowhere near the conventional wisdom.

2. The media hype about the Left/Right blocs is utter rubbish

Cartoon: Philip Whisenhunt, The Commonwealth Times

Every poll gets trumpeted in the media as a scorecard of how many seats are in the "Right" bloc, and how many are in the "Center-Left" bloc. So, for instance, the above poll would be announced as "Right bloc leads 64-56". If they're feeling really adventurous, they might call Zehut the "balance of power", since its leader, Moshe Feiglin, has said he has no preference between Binyamin Netanyahu or Benny Gantz for Prime Minister, claiming that the score is "Right 57-56 Center-Left", with Zehut being the kingmakers. Sounds really close and competitive, right?

Well, it's all utter rubbish, because they are ignoring the fact that the Arab parties are less concerned about serving their constituency than about grandstanding against anything and everything the government does, and will never join any coalition, whether "Right" or "Center-Left". This is a great pity; I've said often that it would be really cool if a right-wing government could co-opt at least one Arab party into the coalition with some harmless portfolio like Minister of Welfare. But it isn't happening any time soon, at least not with the current crop of Arab politicians, so those 11 seats in the poll above are spoilers, and cannot be counted in any "bloc", other than their own. So why does the media keep harping on with this ridiculous scorecard? Because it keeps things exciting; it sounds so much more like a cliffhanger than if they had to tell the truth, which is "Right 64-45 Center-Left".

3. There are no (really) bad scenarios

Photo credit: JPost

I don't believe in trash-talking, not even directed against politicians, and I'm not going to start now. Fortunately, I don't feel much temptation to do so, either. I have friends who support almost every one of the major parties, and I have not attempted to persuade them otherwise, because all the party lists contain some excellent people, who really love Israel, and sincerely want to do their best for the country. They also have a lot of candidates I don't like, but it's unrealistic to expect to like every single candidate on your party list. I may disagree with their approach, but who's to say I know better than them? At the very least, I don't see anyone on the map who both (a) has an agenda that I believe will be seriously detrimental to Israel, and (b) will likely have the power to implement that agenda. The most serious concern I have is that the Blue-and-White party might install a trade union boss as finance minister, but I don't see that as a realistic scenario. As mentioned above, it seems to me that Netanyahu is a shoo-in to form the next government, but if it happens to be Gantz, I'm not too concerned; he would almost certainly have to rely on Feiglin to make his coalition, and Feiglin's price will include the Finance Ministry. Having Feiglin in the government also assuages any concerns I might have that a Gantz-led government would do anything too reckless on the diplomatic front. So, barring some kind of black swan event, I'm pretty relaxed about whatever outcome this election yields.

4. Zehut is a game-changer

That brings me to Feiglin and Zehut. Without getting into arguments for or against any aspect of their platform, I think it's fair to say that Zehut's entry into Israeli politics is a massive game-changer. Firstly, the fact that they even have a manifesto is, amazingly enough, unprecedented. Every other political party only has a list of personalities; you vote for the people and hope they do in office what they intimated they might do while they were campaigning. Zehut has a 344-page platform, spelling out exactly what policies they have committed themselves to. We'll see how good they are about following through on their commitments once they're in office, but one way or another, I hope more parties do the same in future, rather than asking us to close our eyes and open our mouths.

Just one of hundreds of Zehut memes

Secondly, Zehut has whipped up both support and opposition to levels of near-hysteria. You can't post a kitten video on Facebook, without some Zehutnik friend of yours commenting about how life will be better for cats once Zehut runs the country, see page 271 of the platform #מצביע_זהות. To which your Meretz friend responds, calling the Zehut friend a messianic fanatic who wants to build the Third Temple. Then a United Right friend accuses him of being a pothead who wants to destroy Judaism in Israel, followed by a Likudnik berating Feiglin for his anticipated betrayal of the Right, while a Blue & White supporter says Zehut is a dangerous cabal of extreme Rightists who will bring the apocalypse down on our heads. Seriously. Somehow, Zehut has stirred up the pot so much, that literally every other political party feels threatened by them, and the accusations against them are diametrically opposite, depending from direction they originate. That itself speaks volumes. Plus, it's hugely entertaining.

Thirdly, no party before has gone so hard for the jugular in terms of their libertarian agenda to root out the ugly vestiges of socialism in Israel. They are aiming for the Finance Ministry, and there is good reason to believe they will get it. And from there, I am very optimistic that they will liberalize the economy, removing the protectionism, tariffs, and other obstacles to the individual's economic success. Bring it on.

To the people who are worried about Zehut's proposed solution to the Palestinian issue, I get that concern. But, much like Blue & White's union boss is unlikely to become finance minister, I don't see Zehut dictating foreign or security policy any time soon, and they haven't prioritized those issues on their agenda. They're going for finance and education, and in both of those fields, I think they will be an excellent force for good.

5. There is life after Netanyahu

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The election has been complicated by the legal cloud hanging over Netanyahu's head, though that doesn't seem to have affected his likelihood of reelection much. Nonetheless, the indictment against him carries some serious weight. Noah Roth posted an excellent and balanced analysis of the case here, and its really worth reading. 

The bottom line is that even after winning the election, Netanyahu could well be forced out of office. And if he is, the next prime minister will likely be determined by primary elections within the Likud. Are you a Likud member? If so, you may be treated to the privilege of directly electing the next leader of Israel. And despite the fact that many first time voters don't even remember a time when Israel had a prime minister not called Binyamin Netanyahu, everything will be OK. There are a lot of very good and highly qualified candidates in the Likud, and even some who speak English as well as Bibi. Netanyahu has been a very good prime minister, in my opinion, but even without his legal issues, he should have been term-limited. It's not good to have the same person in power for too long, and some fresh leadership might be nice.

6. Not much else will change

As mentioned above, Zehut's likely takeover of the Finance Ministry has potential to make some big impact on the economy. Plus, they've made cannabis legalization a sine qua non condition of entry into any coalition, and nobody is really that strongly against it, so I think it's safe to say we'll soon see pot on sale in pharmacies within the next year.

Other than that, I don't see many other policy initiatives making much headway. The Charedi parties will likely be indispensable to any coalition, so I cannot foresee any major changes to the status quo as far as social or religious legislation is concerned. The Likud will remain in control of security and foreign policy, so expect more of the same there. Ayelet Shaked is banging war drums against the High Court, but I don't foresee her achieving much more of a judicial revolution in her next term of office than she did in the first one. 

The really big unknown factor, of course, will be the unveiling of Trump's Middle East Peace Plan. I have no idea what's in it. Those who do know, aren't saying, and those who say, don't know. But that's one thing that has the potential to set the cat among the pigeons.

7. Relax, everything will be fine!

Credit: Chabad.org

This election is characterized by the fact that there aren't really any probable nightmare scenarios, which hasn't always been the case in past elections. Most of the candidates are actually pretty decent, and whatever happens, things will be fine.

It's not worth getting into heated debates on social media. Our relationships with our friends and neighbors will continue past April 9; it's really not worth burning them over one or two votes here or there.

Shalom al Yisrael!