Knesset November Madness 2022!

 (Crossposted to Jewschool.)

Now that the chagim are over, we’re turning our attention to the upcoming Israeli election (among other upcoming elections).  For a while we were doing this every few months, but now it has been a whole year and a half since Knesset March Madness 2021!  But now it’s time for Knesset November Madness 2022!!!  If you’ve been closely following all the developments leading up to the election, or if you haven’t been following this at all, you’re invited to enter with your predictions!

Once again, here’s how it works:

How to Enter: Go to the November Madness link and put in your predictions for how many seats each of the 39 parties will win.  All predictions must be non-negative integers (0 is allowed), and your predictions must add up to 120. (For reasons discussed below, it is impossible for a party to win 1 or 2 seats, and unlikely that a party will win 3 seats.  However, if you choose to hedge your bets and guess that a given party will win 1, 2, or 3 seats, that is a legal entry in the contest.) Entrance is free, but there is a suggested donation of $10 (or 35 NIS) to the organization of your choice dedicated to making Israel the best it can be. (If you win, feel free to share which organization you chose and why.)  Israeli citizens are encouraged to vote in the actual election as well.

The Rules (for the real election): The 40 parties have submitted ordered lists of candidates. Here is the full list of candidates in Hebrew, and a list of the parties in English.  Wikipedia also has partial lists of candidates in English.  On election day (November 1), Israeli citizens will go to polling places in and near Israel, and vote for a party (not for individual candidates). All parties that win at least 3.25% of the vote will win seats in the Knesset, proportional to their share of the vote.  For example, suppose Seder Hadash wins 1% of the vote, HaKalkalit HaHadasha wins 33%, and HaAtzma’im HaHadashim wins 66%. Then Seder Hadash wins no seats in the Knesset (since they were below the 3.25% threshold), and the other parties will proportionally split the 120 Knesset seats: HaKalkalit HaHadasha gets 40 seats (so the top 40 candidates on its list are elected), and HaAtzma’im HaHadashim gets 80 seats. If vacancies arise later in the term, there are no special elections – the next candidate on the party’s list (e.g. #41 on the HaKalkalit HaHadasha list) enters the Knesset. It is mathematically impossible for all 40 parties to win seats in the Knesset.  (We are unclear on what happens if all 40 parties split the vote evenly so that none of them is above the threshold.)

The Rules (for the Knesset November Madness pool): The deadline to enter is Monday, October 31, 2021, at 11:59 pm Israel Time (5:59 pm EDT). When the final election results are published, each entry will receive a score based on how many Knesset seats were predicted correctly. For example, suppose the results are as in the above example (HaAtzma’im HaHadashim 80, HaKalkalit HaHadasha 40). I predicted 60 seats for HaKalkalit HaHadasha, 50 for HaAtzma’im HaHadashim, and 10 for Hadash/Ta’al. Then my score is 90, since I correctly predicted 40 seats for HaKalkalit HaHadasha and 50 seats for HaAtzma’im HaHadashim.  The entry with the highest score wins!

Ties will be broken based on two tiebreaker questions:
1) Of the parties that do NOT win seats in the Knesset, which will come closest?
2) Which party will get the FEWEST votes?

The tiebreakers will be resolved in this order: exact match on question 1; exact match on question 2; closest on question 1 (if you picked a party that DOES win seats, you’re out of consideration for this one); closest on question 2.

Good luck!!!!!!!!!!!