Thirty-four Parties

While I am living in a college dormitory complex 34 parties does not indicate some change in my personal behavior. Elections in Israel are set for February 10th; there are currently 34 parties on the ballot. While we have several third parties in Alaska (for example the party Todd Palin registered for, the Alaska Independence Party), they almost never have candidates elected to office. In Israel however, where citizens vote for a party as opposed to a representative, any party receiving 3% of the vote or greater gets a seat in the Knesset. Among the parties, according to the Jerusalem Post, one was formed with a coalition of Holocaust survivors and advocates for legalizing marijuana.

There are a few similarities between Israel politics and Alaska politics. The Prime Minister is currently being investigated for corruption and influence peddling. The former mayor of Lod, Benny Regev, was indicted for bribery. The head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party (and former Deputy Prime Minister), Avigdor Lieberman and his daughter, are under investigation for fraud (bank accounts in Cyprus).

Another similarity is the cheesy political ads. While I barely understand Hebrew, I can comprehend the symbolism – a man dressed as a shepherd costume with a sheep on his back. Unlike the United States, the political commercials are funded by the government and are restricted time slots at the very beginning and the very end of prime time.

A very interesting voter web site is the voter’s compass (http://israel.kieskompas.nl). You begin by answering 35 survey questions, 30 about issues and five about the leaders of the three major parties. Your answers are then complied so that an icon representing your views is placed on a graph with four quadrants. The X-Y axes change depending on which combination of issues you want to examine: security issues, socioeconomic issues, or religious issues. For security-socioeconomic the X-axis goes from socioeconomic left to socioeconomic right (actually in Israel I should write that it goes from right to left) and the Y-axis extends from dove to hawk. For religion-socioeconomic the X-axis is the same as the previous graph while the Y-axis extends from religious to secular. (Note: for the test later in the blog you will have to figure out each axis on the remaining graph).

Only 15 of the 34 parties are on the voter’s compass. The graph is interactive so you can click on the icon of each party; those closest to you are understood as having positions similar to yours whereas those farther away have divergent positions. The compass also provides an overall percentage agreement with each of the 15 parties. As with the graphs the level of agreement is further broken down into the three categories of security, socioeconomic and religion. Finally you can also see how similar your position is to the three main party leaders, Barak, Livni, and Netanyahu.

Now for 15 points, what are the axes of the third graph?