A seat moves in the rounding

The top of the forecast page now reads Netanyahu bloc is slightly ahead with about 55 seats, Opposition bloc with 52, and Arab parties with 13. On 11 October it read 54, 53 and 13, the seats it had shown since 6 October.

The word is the same, and so, almost, is the figure it is read from: the Netanyahu bloc comes out the larger of the two in 63.6% of simulations, counting a tie as half to each, from 62.8%. “Slightly ahead” runs from 60% to 75%. The seat moved for a different reason, and most of it is arithmetic.

Three polls

Three polls are new since 11 October:

• Kan 11 (Kantar), 11 October: 53 seats for the Netanyahu bloc, 50 for the opposition and 13 for the Arab parties, plus 4 for The Reservists-New Economic Party, which is in neither bloc
• Channel 12 (Midgam), 12 October: 49, 54 and 13, plus 4 for The Reservists-New Economic Party
• Channel 14 (Filber), 12 October: 61, 42 and 13, plus 4 for The Reservists-New Economic Party

Two put the Netanyahu bloc ahead and one puts the opposition ahead. Together they carry 14.8% of the weight in today’s average; Channel 14’s counts at half weight.

The seat

In the simulations both large blocs lost a little on average, the Netanyahu bloc about a quarter of a seat and the opposition bloc about a third, while the Arab parties held level. The room went to lists in no bloc.

The table shares the 120 seats among the three blocs in proportion to those averages. Whole seats come first, 54, 52 and 12, and the 2 left over go to the blocs with the largest fractions. The Arab parties take one both times. On 11 October the other went to the opposition bloc, whose fraction was larger than the Netanyahu bloc’s by about a tenth of a seat. Today it goes to the Netanyahu bloc, whose fraction is larger by about three hundredths.

Noam

Part of what moved those averages is a list that won no seats in any poll. Midgam’s poll for Channel 12 named Noam below the threshold, at 0.5%, and it is the only poll in the window that names it. On that one reading Noam is back in the forecast, and it wins seats in 8.0% of simulations. Haredi Public, which every poll that names it also places below the threshold, wins seats in 7.8%. Those figures come from the uncertainty the model puts around every list, not from any poll, and the seats such a list wins in a simulation come out of everyone else’s.

Run without Noam, the same polls give 54, 53 and 13, the table of 11 October, and the Netanyahu bloc comes out the larger in 63.5% rather than 63.6%. Noam is running, so it stays in the forecast. What the comparison measures is the size of today’s move: one seat in the table, and less than a point in the figure the headline’s word is read from.

The rest

Neither bloc is near a majority. The Netanyahu bloc reaches 61 seats in 2.5% of simulations, from 3.1%, and the opposition in 0.9%, from 1.4%. The opposition bloc and the Arab parties reach 61 between them in 82.7%, from 84.9%. That is arithmetic about seats and nothing more: those seats belong to lists that do not act as one, and no coalition is modelled here.

The Reservists-New Economic Party won 4 seats in all three polls; in Channel 14’s, by the channel’s own account, it crossed the threshold for the first time. Its chance of winning seats rose from 41 in 100 to 48. At 50 in 100 the table would give it 4 seats, taken from all three blocs.

Amcha Israel won seats in Kan 11’s poll and fell below the threshold in the other two. Its chance of winning seats fell from 66 in 100 to 61, so the table keeps its 4 seats, in the Netanyahu bloc.

The table has Yashar with 23 seats and Likud with 22, from 24 and 21. In the simulations Yashar wins more seats in 46.2%, Likud in 43.7%, and they tie in 10.2%.