Here’s a brief follow up on yesterday’s Israeli election now that the actual vote count and results are coming into view. We began with exit polls suggesting that the “change” bloc had secured slightly more seats than the Netanyahu bloc — 52 to 50 seats — with the two Arab parties getting a historically high 18 or 19 seats. Then the exits started to shift to the Netanyahu bloc and Likud officials were claiming he had been dramatically underestimated and would get upwards of 60 seat and perhaps even a majority. The actual results were lopsided in Netanyahu’s direction but as they’ve been counted they’ve trended down. Now with 86% of the vote counted it’s down to 53 seats Netanyahu bloc, 48 for the “change” bloc and 19 for the two Arab parties. If the trend continues, the Netanyahu bloc might fall one or two seats lower but I have no insight whether the votes that remain will continue that downward trend.
There are three major exit polls in Israel. Two of those three have now revised their estimates to a tie between the two blocs with 51 seats each. The third still has it at 52 for the change bloc and 50 for the Netanyahu bloc. That’s only a single seat difference from the earlier estimates which all had a change lead. But it’s a pretty significant single-seat difference since it gives the two blocs an equal number of seats. It remains mostly symbolic since neither side is anywhere close to 61 seats. But for the narrative, vibes, claims to the legitimacy, it shifts things at least somewhat.
Late Update – 8:33 p.m.: Likud and the Netanyahu bloc continue to improve over the initial exit polls. Of the three main exit polls, two show a 51-51 tie and the third shows a 52-49 lead for Netanyahu’s bloc. These still leave both blocs far from the minimum of 61 seats to form a government. But as I noted above, it gives Netanyahu more of an argument for a “win.” Interestingly, the exit poll that shows the 52-49 Netanyahu bloc lead shows the “change” bloc losing one of those seats to the Joint List, which in that exit poll gets 12 seats. Likud officials are reportedly telling journalists they’re expecting their bloc total to rise to 55 or 57 votes. Obviously, talk is cheap. You can spin as much as you want. But I don’t have a good feeling about this trajectory.
Here’s a brief follow up on yesterday’s Israeli election now that the actual vote count and results are coming into view. We began with exit polls suggesting that the “change” bloc had secured slightly more seats than the Netanyahu bloc — 52 to 50 seats — with the two Arab parties getting a historically high 18 or 19 seats. Then the exits started to shift to the Netanyahu bloc and Likud officials were claiming he had been dramatically underestimated and would get upwards of 60 seat and perhaps even a majority. The actual results were lopsided in Netanyahu’s direction but as they’ve been counted they’ve trended down. Now with 86% of the vote counted it’s down to 53 seats Netanyahu bloc, 48 for the “change” bloc and 19 for the two Arab parties. If the trend continues, the Netanyahu bloc might fall one or two seats lower but I have no insight whether the votes that remain will continue that downward trend.
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There are three major exit polls in Israel. Two of those three have now revised their estimates to a tie between the two blocs with 51 seats each. The third still has it at 52 for the change bloc and 50 for the Netanyahu bloc. That’s only a single seat difference from the earlier estimates which all had a change lead. But it’s a pretty significant single-seat difference since it gives the two blocs an equal number of seats. It remains mostly symbolic since neither side is anywhere close to 61 seats. But for the narrative, vibes, claims to the legitimacy, it shifts things at least somewhat.
Late Update – 8:33 p.m.: Likud and the Netanyahu bloc continue to improve over the initial exit polls. Of the three main exit polls, two show a 51-51 tie and the third shows a 52-49 lead for Netanyahu’s bloc. These still leave both blocs far from the minimum of 61 seats to form a government. But as I noted above, it gives Netanyahu more of an argument for a “win.” Interestingly, the exit poll that shows the 52-49 Netanyahu bloc lead shows the “change” bloc losing one of those seats to the Joint List, which in that exit poll gets 12 seats. Likud officials are reportedly telling journalists they’re expecting their bloc total to rise to 55 or 57 votes. Obviously, talk is cheap. You can spin as much as you want. But I don’t have a good feeling about this trajectory.
A D.C. grand jury has refused to vote for an indictment of Cassidy Hutchinson, the one-time first-term Trump aide who became a star witness for the House January 6th subcommittee that investigated the attack. Obviously it’s good that illegitimate attempt failed since Hutchinson is guilty of nothing more than acting honorably. It’s embarrassing for the administration since it’s hard to fail at the grand jury level where the government is literally in charge of everything. But there’s something deeper and more important here: the un-strategic, increasingly impulsive and ultimately self-defeating nature of the Trump legal retribution campaign.
As you know, I take a pretty dim view of prediction markets, especially for capturing anything more than conventional wisdom when it comes to election outcomes. There’s also a whole controversy about how much prediction markets are vulnerable to insider trading. But the truth is that insider trading is actually an intentional feature of prediction markets. Perhaps not literal insider trading — as in an officer of a public company placing bets on non-public information — but people trading on non-public information. Indeed, many don’t remember this, but one of the seemingly harebrained ideas to come out of George W. Bush’s first term Pentagon was the idea of creating a terrorism prediction market. I’m not kidding about this. It would have basically been a Kalshi or Polymarket about future terror attacks, with the idea being that you’d get people with knowledge of future of attacks to place wagers, and thus, give U.S. policy planners and counterterrorism officers leads on future attacks.
In any case, I note this because again, the real logic of prediction markets is you get the people with the inside dope to place money making bets on future outcomes. You thus use the incentive of winnings to work to pull information out of the realm of secrecy into the open.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) — who has repeatedly questioned the polls showing Democrats flipping the House of Representatives — insisted Tuesday there will be a “peaceful transfer of power” following the midterm elections.
