Five (Elections) in Less Than Four (Years)

Israel is about to hold its fifth election in less than four years. With elections taking place every 2.4 years, this places Israel first in the world in terms of frequencies of elections since 1996.

The decision has been made: the Knesset voted for its dissoution and early elections were called for 1 November 2022. These will be the 5th elections in less than four years. This is an unprecedented frequency in the landscape of established parliamentary democracies. True, even before the current crisis, Israel did not excel in political stability in comparison with other parliamentary democracies. On the eve of the April 2019 elections, it was ranked seventh from bottom out of 21 countries, with elections every 3.3 years on average (Figure 1). The rapid decline is the result of the ongoing deep political-constitutional crisis. Today, as we head towards a fifth election, Israel has slipped to the last place among those countries, with elections every 2.4 years on average (Figure 2).

Figure 1. Frequencies of elections (averages, in years) from 1996 until the April 2019 elections

Figure 2. Frequencies of elections (averages, in years) from 1996 until the November 2022 elections