Final election results and February Madness winners!

The soldiers’ votes are in, and the Knesset election results are final! Here are the rankings:

1. Kadima 28
2. Likud 27
3. Yisrael Beytenu 15
4. Labor 13
5. Shas 11
6. United Torah Judaism 5
7. United Arab List - Ta’al 4
8. National Union 4
9. Hadash 4
10. Meretz 3
11. HaBayit HaYehudi 3
12. Balad 3
13. Green Movement - Meimad
14. Gil
15. Aleh Yarok (Green Leaf)
16. Greens
17. Strong Israel
18. Tzabar
19. Koach Lehashpia
20. Da’am (Organization for Democratic Action)
21. Yisrael HaMithadeshet
22. Holocaust Survivors & Grown-Up Green Leaf
23. Leeder
24. Tzomet
25. Koach HaKesef
26. Men’s Rights
27. HaYisraelim
28. Or
29. Ahrayut
30. Brit Olam
31. Lev
32. Lazuz
33. Lechem

You can compare this with the results from last time, and refer to this guide if you can’t remember which party is which.

February Madness was a hard-fought contest. We had a five-way tie for first place! BZ in New York (I made my picks before anyone else entered, so I couldn’t strategically base my predictions on other entries, but even so, I would have recused myself if I had ended up as the final winner), Daniel L in the United States, Dunash in New York, JXG in Jerusalem, and W Bayer in Petah Tikvah all correctly predicted 111 out of 120 Knesset seats (though not the same 111).

We do have two tiebreaker questions to deal with these cases. However, no one got either tiebreaker question right. No one picked the Green Movement - Meimad as coming in first among the parties who didn’t make it into the Knesset (though a number of contestants incorrectly predicted that they would win Knesset seats), and no one picked Lechem as coming in last.

So, to settle the tie, we’ll see who came closest. For the first tiebreaker question, 3 of the finalists picked Gil (which came in second among the parties that didn’t win Knesset seats): BZ, Dunash, and W Bayer. Among those, W Bayer did the best on the second tiebreaker question, choosing Koach HaKesef, which finished closest to the bottom among the finalists’ picks for this question.

So W Bayer is now the reigning February Madness champion! Congratulations!!!

Honorable mention goes to Brian Rosman in Newton MA and David Singer in Los Angeles, both of whom did the best overall on the second tiebreaker question, picking Brit Olam to come in last.

Thanks to everyone who participated! And if you didn’t do as well as you had hoped, or if you missed the deadline to enter, don’t worry — the way things are looking, you won’t have to wait long until the next one! (To start the speculation now, feel free to leave a comment with your guess for the date of the next Knesset election.)