Explainer: Running on joint lists in elections: who does it benefit?
Former Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid announced a joint run of the "Bennett 2026" and Yesh Atid parties in the 2026 election. It is certainly possible that we will see additional joint runs like these ahead of the elections, for example, within the center bloc, the right-wing bloc, and among the Arab parties. The assumption is that such a run would benefit the parties and the bloc. But is this assumption correct?
Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90
What is the legal basis for running on joint lists?
According to Section 57 of the Knesset Elections Law, two or more parties may submit a joint list of candidates to the Central Elections Committee, which also specifies exactly which party each candidate is affiliated with. After the elections, if the joint list passes the electoral threshold (i.e., the minimum percentage of the vote needed in order to have seats in Knesset, which is 3.25% of the valid votes), the Members of Knesset elected on its behalf form a single joint parliamentary faction, but they may also easily split into several factions, according to the parties that composed the list. It should be noted that running on joint lists is very common in Israeli politics.
When is there electoral justification for running on a joint list?
Beyond considerations of ideological proximity between parties, the motivation with the most electoral justification for a joint list is the concern of failure to pass the electoral threshold. Put simply, a party that is at risk of not passing the threshold may, for its own sake and for the sake of its bloc, join a joint list; otherwise, its voters’ ballots may be "thrown away" and not represented in Knesset.
A situation in which a list fails to pass the electoral threshold can determine the outcome of an election. The clearest example occurred in the April 2019 elections: the right-wing bloc failed to form a government because The New Right and Zehut both failed to do so, effectively "throwing out" more than a quarter of a million votes between the two parties. Had The New Right run on a joint list with the Union of Right-Wing Parties (itself a joint list), the right-wing bloc would have won more than 60 seats and been able to form a coalition. By contrast, in the 2022 elections, the left-wing bloc was harmed when Meretz and Balad failed to pass the electoral threshold. Of course, all if this has become clear only in hindsight.
A party that fails to pass the threshold also harms another party from the same bloc that signed a vote sharing agreement (also known as surplus agreement) with it.
According to the current method of distributing Knesset seats after elections, known as the Bader–Ofer method, larger parties have an advantage in receiving surplus seats (which are allocated after the first round of seat distribution when calculating the results). Two lists that sign a vote-sharing agreement between them are considered a single (thus larger) list for the purpose of allocating surplus seats, therefore increasing their chances of winning such seats. However, such an agreement is realized only if both lists pass the electoral threshold; therefore, a list that signed a vote sharing agreement with a list that did not pass the threshold is treated as though it did not sign an agreement at all, which reduces its chances of winning additional seats. This happened, for example, to the Labor Party in the most recent elections after it signed a vote-sharing agreement with Meretz, which did not enter the Knesset.
Vote-sharing agreements are also an additional consideration in the decision of whether to run on a joint list. Because of the advantage that larger lists have in the allocation of surplus seats, in order to maximize its achievements, each bloc should compete with an even number of lists, so that all of them can sign vote-sharing agreements with one another. This can be an additional consideration (both for and against) in the decision of whether to run on a joint list. The anti-Netanyahu bloc also suffered from this in the 2022 elections: Labor signed a vote-sharing agreement with Meretz, Yesh Atid with the National Unity Party—and Yisrael Beiteinu was left alone. In fact, in a certain scenario in which in those elections Balad had run on a joint list with Ra’am, Meretz had run on a joint list with Labor, and each of the parties in the center-left bloc and the Arab bloc had signed a vote-sharing agreement with its counterpart, it is possible that the Netanyahu bloc would have reached only 59 seats.
In addition, a single party, even if it is expected to pass the electoral threshold, may choose to run on a joint list for various reasons. First, it is certainly possible that the party and its leaders will believe that running as part of a joint list will benefit their bloc; in this sense, one might even view a party leader who agrees to be placed second on a joint list as taking a ‘noble step’ in favor of a broader interest. Furthermore, a party that fears a disappointing electoral outcome may prefer to join lists with a larger party, so as to avoid "exposing" its electoral weakness or to secure a significant number of its candidates in realistic positions on the joint list.
Does size really matter?
In general, the assumption that the size of a list constitutes a political asset in and of itself is highly questionable. First, in the proportional electoral system practiced in Israel, there is almost no electoral advantage to large lists (apart from surplus-seat allocation). Second, for the purpose of forming a government, in Israel’s parliamentary system, what matters is the size of the coalition built in the Knesset, not the size of each individual list. For example, after the 2009 elections, Netanyahu formed a government even though Kadima won one more seat than Likud, and Naftali Bennett formed a government even though he headed the small Yamina faction. Third, even from the perspective of the individual list, size does not always determine outcomes. A party that is essential to a coalition can earn roles in government and budget allocations regardless of its size. Here, too, the clearest example is, of course, Naftali Bennett, who maximized the dependence of the anti-Netanyahu bloc on the Yamina party for forming a government, but also the ultra-Orthodox parties, which often receive budgets and influence disproportionate to their number of seats. In addition, Netanyahu as prime minister often preferred, for political reasons, to assign important ministries specifically to smaller coalition partners. This is especially true with regard to finance ministers: Netanyahu appointed Lapid as finance minister in 2013, Kahlon of Kulanu in 2015, and Smotrich in the current government.
When can a joint run actually cause electoral harm?
When parties run together, they may lose “purist” voters who object to the alliance. For example, the Likud–Yisrael Beiteinu alliance won 31 seats in the 2013 elections, far fewer than the 42 seats won by Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu when they ran separately in the 2009 elections. Similarly, in the 2021 elections, the Labor–Gesher–Meretz list won 7 seats, compared to 11 seats for the two separate lists that ran in the previous elections (Labor–Gesher and Meretz).
From a bloc perspective, another potential advantage of parties running separately is the ability to attract voters from other blocs. Indeed, one way to do this is specifically through the candidacy of a small party that manages to distinguish itself from the other parties in the bloc, for example through moderate positions or a leader who enjoys cross-bloc popularity. For example, in the 2015 elections Moshe Kahlon and the Kulanu party, which joined Netanyahu’s government after the elections, succeeded (according to estimates) in winning several seats from center-left voters.
Perhaps the most prominent example of the advantages of party fragmentation is the 2021 elections: in the only recent elections in which the anti-Netanyahu bloc succeeded in forming a government, it did so through maximal fragmentation into seven different lists: Meretz, Labor, Yesh Atid, Blue and White, Yisrael Beiteinu, New Hope, and Yamina (and one can add Ra’am to the list).
And yet—can there be an advantage to size?
Of course—this is not set in stone. Every election and every list have unique characteristics, and it is certainly possible that under certain circumstances there would be electoral value to running on a joint list. For example, Meretz’s joint list won two more seats in the 1992 elections than the three lists that composed it (Meretz, Mapam, and Shinui) won in the previous elections.
One prominent scenario in which size can be advantageous is the formation of a large joint list that seeks to contend for power, and can generate enthusiasm among voters leading to an “electoral surge” in its favor. A clear example is the Blue and White list, which was created ahead of the April 2019 elections by Yesh Atid, Benny Gantz’s Israel Resilience, and Moshe Ya’alon’s Telem, and achieved an impressive result of 35 seats, slightly more than what polls had predicted for the separate parties prior to the merger. Admittedly, this achievement came mainly at the expense of its bloc partners, Labor and Meretz, rather than at the expense of the right-wing bloc (Labor lost 18 seats compared to the previous elections, when it ran on a joint list with Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah party), but it is reasonable to assume that Blue and White also succeeded in recruiting seats from parties outside the bloc and from those who did not vote in the previous elections. The Zionist Union list also succeeded in the 2015 elections in generating enthusiasm among center-left voters and winning more seats than the two separate parties, Labor and Hatnuah, won in the previous elections. However, in other cases, the formation of a joint list that sought to contend for power did not have a similar effect. We have already mentioned the lack of success of Likud–Yisrael Beiteinu in the 2013 elections, and further back one can note the Likud–Gesher–Tzomet list in the 1996 elections, which won eight fewer seats than Likud and Tzomet won in the 1992 elections.
And what about the Arab parties?
Among the Arab parties the situation is different. There, recent history shows a clear electoral advantage to running on a joint list. Their peak achievements—13 seats (in 2015 and September 2019), and even 15 seats in the 2020 elections—occurred when all four ran together on the Joint List. When they split, they won only 10 seats in total. This is clearly reflected in voter turnout rates: when the Arab parties ran on a single joint list, turnout in Arab localities was significantly higher. For example, in the 2020 elections, turnout in Arab localities stood at 64.8% (the highest since the late 1990s); in the 2021 elections, when they split into two separate lists, turnout plummeted to 44.6%. In the 2022 elections, in which they again ran on two separate lists, it rose slightly, but only to 53.2%, still significantly lower compared to election campaigns in which the Joint List ran.
The commonly accepted explanation is that all the Arab parties running on a joint list conveys a message that the parties have managed to rise above personal and sectoral interests for the benefit of Arab society as a whole. Indeed, according to current polls as well, a joint run by all of them enjoys broad support among the Arab public and would significantly increase their political strength.
