Israel’s national elections committee has tried humor to cajole people to come out to vote yet again.
“You know what to do,” one public service advertisement began, instead of trotting out the usual Election Day instructions. “Hey, you look so familiar. You must come here often?” a talking ballot box quipped in another. It even produced a “Save the Date” rap video for those who have so lost track of the seemingly endless campaign cycle that they had no idea when the vote was.
It’s all part of an effort urging voters not to succumb to election fatigue and give up their right to have a voice. And part of the motivation is that this election, like the previous four, is being closely fought, and for many parties the gain or loss of a single parliamentary seat could fundamentally affect the overall outcome.
For one thing, the latest polls indicated that several parties that helped make up the current governing coalition were hovering around or falling below the threshold to win seats in Parliament: 3.25 percent of the total vote.
There have also been concerns about a particularly low turnout among Arab voters this time, and any significant decrease is likely to shrink Arab representation in the next Parliament — probably to the benefit of Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc. In the last election, in March 2021, voter turnout in Arab localities dropped to a low of 44.6 percent, compared with an overall turnout of 67.4 percent.
On Tuesday morning, the foreground of one Jerusalem polling station was uncharacteristically deserted an hour after it opened. There was none of the usual festive atmosphere — no party activists making last-minute pitches, no music, no balloons. One voter in the slow trickle of arrivals asked at the entrance whether it was even the right day to turn up.
One local resident, Amos Cafri, 74, a psychologist, who said he had voted for the left-wing Meretz party, said it was a “terrible feeling” having to come back for the fifth time in less than four years. “Of course I came to do the little I could do to help democracy in the country,” he said.
But with polls once again indicating gridlock — forming a government looks difficult for both the pro-Netanyahu and the anti-Netanyahu camp — some would-be voters expressed dismay and said they no longer trusted any of the parties.
“I probably won’t vote,” Asaf Eshel, 27, who works in a cafe in Jerusalem, said this past week. “There’s no point. It’s not relevant. There will probably be another election.”
Mr. Eshel said that he had been engaged in the last four elections, voting for different parties across the right-left spectrum. “But you pay an emotional price,” he said, noting that parties often ended up doing exactly what they had promised not to do.
Now, he said, “I don’t believe any of them.”
Jake Mayersdorf, 26, an American-born Israeli who lives in Jerusalem, said he had voted for the centrist Blue and White party last time but was now considering voting for the Pirate Party, whose platform includes free higher education, establishing a hotel in Ukraine for Russian soldiers who need a break from the war, and doing away with the electoral threshold for parties seeking to enter Israel’s Parliament.
Last time, the party garnered just 1,309 votes, or 0.03 percent of ballots cast — far short of the required threshold.
