Posted on 03/17/2015 5:18:27 AM PDT by Dave346
Polls scheduled to close 10pm local time / 4pm EDT.
Turnout as of 9am was 7.4%, at 10am was 13.7%, and at 12pm was 26.5%.
Exit polls will be released when polls close in less than 8 hours.
For live coverage in English, click on link below:
(Excerpt) Read more at i24news.tv ...
Slam away, it just keeps it turned up and on Jewish minds.
Obamaesque.
He’s that desperate - or confident he’ll be PM.
We’ll see what the exit polls show tonight.
This link shows turnout percentages today compared to 2013 and 2009.
http://bechirot.gov.il/election/English/About/Pages/CumulativeVotingPercentage20_eng.aspx
Page crashed.
General Facts About the Elections for the 20th Knesset
Budget for the Central Elections Committee for the 2015 fiscal year | 241,746,000 ₪
Number of eligible voters | 5,881,696
Number of regular polling stations in Israel | 10,119
Number of polling stations in the hospitals | 196
Number of polling stations in prisons and detention centers | 57
Total number of polling stations in Israel | 10,372
Number of polling stations at diplomatic representations abroad | 98
Number of special polling stations for people with limited mobility | 1,548
Total number of polling stations for people with limited mobility | 2,693
http://bechirot.gov.il/election/English/kneset20/Pages/GeneralData_eng.aspx
Official Israeli election website has been on and off today. Must be getting more hits than usual.
Meet Isaac Herzog, the Israeli Politician Who Speaks English With a Democratic Accent
Labor’s new leader wants to mend ties with Washington, and he’s looking at Obama and de Blasio for inspiration
http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/161046/isaac-buji-herzog
4:20 p.m. Likud MK Miri Regev called on all of Israel’s citizens to go to the polls on Tuesday and vote in favor of her party, lead by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in order to prevent the possibility of Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog from assuming the premiership.
As Regev cast her vote, she noted that constituents from the Israeli Arab sector were arrivng to polling stations and increasing the voter turnout. She said that buses provided by the V15 group that seeks a new government were transporting Israeli Arabs with the goal of overthrowing the current right-wing government.
It worked... projected turnout is slightly higher than 2013 by closing time - 66% in 2015 as opposed to 65% in 2013.
The V15 group busing in the Arabs is Obama’s operation. They aren’t even trying to hide what they are doing!
You have to have ID and then you can only vote where you have been assigned to vote, which is mailed to you before the election. If you vote at the wrong place (not assigned to you) your vote won’t count.
Yup. Of course not.
Obama’s efforts may just pay off.
In giving Israel an unstable government.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/192769
Netanyahu said that Arab voters are being brought to the polling booths by V-15 and other NGOs funded from abroad. “We do not have NGOs,” he said. “We do not have V-15, we have ‘tzav 8’ [as the orders calling up soldiers to the battlefield are called – ed.]. We have you. If you do not go to the voting booth, Ahmed Tibi and Hanin Zoabi will make Buji Herzog prime minister for the Left.
“That is why we must go and close the gap. Come en masse, bring your families, bring your friends, come to the voting booth and vote Mahal [the letters that represent Likud – ed.] and with your help and God’s help we will establish a right wing government, a nationalist camp government.”
Netanyahu said that he is “very worried” about the reports that the left is busing Arabs to the voting booths. “If we do not wake up, if we do not bring everyone out, the families, the friends, the relatives, a left wing government will be established and we will all understand the terrible consequences for the state. There is a possibility of narrowing the gap.”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/192773
Join Arutz Sheva tonight, at 9:30 p.m. Israel-time (7:30 p.m. GMT; 3:30 p.m. ET) for a live elections night broadcast.
We’ll be streaming our video broadcast here on our website, live from Jerusalem, giving you all the latest news, info and analysis from a range of experts and party representatives.
Voting ends at 10 p.m. tonight, and we’ll be providing the latest figures as the votes are counted in realtime.
Be the first to know - make sure to tune in at 9:30 p.m. for our live elections night broadcast!
Thanks for the link!
Arabs who live within the pre-1967 boundaries of Israel are Israeli citizens and are allowed to vote. They are 20% of the population, but rarely vote in large numbers. This year, the various tiny Arab splinter parties are running as a joint coalition, which is expected to boost Arab turnout substantially.
Voter fraud is not an issue, because voters must show their National ID Card.
As others have pointed out above, a high Arab turnout does not benefit Herzog (Netanyahu's opponent), because the Arab members of parliament will not sit in a coalition government with either of the two leading Jewish parties. It will, however, make it more difficult for either Herzog or Netanyahu to form a stable coalition government.
17:06
Turnout by 4 p.m. at 45.4%
45.4% of eligible voters cast their ballots by 4 p.m., slightly less than the 46.6% measured by 4 p.m. during the 2013 election.
Turnout among IDF soldiers is nearly 3% higher for this time of day.
Exactly.
Who wants to have as a coalition partner a hodgepodge coalition of communist and islamist baddies?
No one in Israel with a lick of common sense.
Odds look good Zionist Union-Likud will be forced into a grand coalition government.
Higher soldiers’ vote should help to offset the Arab turnout. Most of those will go to the Right.
Couple that with the fact the overall turnout is lower than expected, I’m feeling oddly content.
True, they require photo ID, but I was reading somewhere about Israeli monitors being thrown out of Arab polling locations in the past.
Fraud is always possible if the ones counting the ballots are corrupt.
Now if they installed cameras as the Election Committee Head suggested 2 years ago, I’d agree that it would be much harder to tamper with.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.