Italy’s Voting Law Would Give Netanyahu 65 Seats
Had Israel held its October 27 election under Italy’s new electoral law, Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc would have secured approximately 65 seats in the 120-member Knesset, enough to govern with an independent parliamentary majority. Instead, the right-wing and religious parties aligned with Netanyahu won 53 seats, leaving the prime minister without a majority and opening the way for Gadi Eisenkot to attempt to form a government.
The difference comes down to just 0.12 percentage points.
According to the official election results published by the Knesset, Likud, Otzma Yehudit, Religious Zionism–Zehut, Shas and United Torah Judaism received a combined 2,397,088 votes out of 5,691,396 valid ballots. That amounts to 42.12%, narrowly exceeding the threshold established by Italy’s new electoral law, enacted in October 2026.
The Italian system grants a majority bonus of 70 seats in the 400-member Chamber of Deputies to the leading electoral coalition, provided it obtains at least 42% of valid votes in both parliamentary chambers and satisfies the law’s other requirements. Applying a simplified version of that mechanism to Israel’s unicameral parliament would mean reserving 21 Knesset seats for the winning coalition and distributing the remaining 99 proportionally. Netanyahu’s bloc would receive approximately 44 proportional seats plus the 21-seat bonus, reaching 65. Eisenkot’s bloc would have around 40 seats, while the Arab parties would hold 15.
This is a counterfactual exercise, rather than a literal application of Italian legislation. Italy has two parliamentary chambers and electoral rules that cannot be transferred directly to Israel. The calculation nevertheless illustrates how different electoral systems can produce markedly different parliamentary outcomes from the same votes.
The political consequences would be substantial. On November 7, President Isaac Herzog announced his intention to task Eisenkot with forming a government, after 67 incoming lawmakers recommended the Yashar leader, compared with 46 who recommended Netanyahu. Seven lawmakers from United Torah Judaism recommended neither candidate. Yet Eisenkot’s electoral bloc controls only 48 seats, and the recommendations leave unresolved the question of which parties could actually govern together.
An alternative administration could depend on support from Arab parties remaining outside the coalition. According to a November 8 report cited by The Times of Israel, Ra’am may vote in favor of an Eisenkot-led government even without a coalition agreement, while the Joint List could abstain rather than vote to bring it down. Avigdor Liberman, meanwhile, has rejected participation in a minority government dependent on Arab-party support.
A presidential recommendation, a vote of confidence and continuing parliamentary support are different political commitments. A government capable of taking office may still struggle to secure agreement on its subsequent policies.
The Italian comparison raises an immediate objection: electoral systems influence political behavior. Had Israel adopted a majority bonus, parties might have negotiated different alliances, campaigned on different platforms and attracted different voters. The arithmetic alone cannot establish what the election result would actually have been.
I agree that electoral incentives matter. I am less convinced that they would necessarily have produced a unified opposition coalition before election day.
Eisenkot explicitly ruled out including Ra’am in his government during the campaign. He also established conditions for potential partners involving recognition of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, national service and the fight against Hamas. A formal pre-election alliance with the Arab parties would have required him to reconsider positions presented to voters as important political commitments.
Such a decision could also have carried an electoral cost. Some voters attracted to Eisenkot’s military background and centrist positioning might have reconsidered their support if he had committed in advance to a government dependent on Arab parties. The extent of any such shift is impossible to establish, although the political risk helps explain the reluctance to make that commitment.
It is therefore reasonable to examine a scenario involving three distinct electoral camps: Netanyahu’s right-wing and religious bloc, the alliance surrounding Eisenkot, and the Arab parties. Their precise vote shares might have changed, but a comprehensive pre-election alliance among Netanyahu’s opponents should not be assumed.
Under the Italian model, Netanyahu’s bloc would have obtained a parliamentary majority through an electoral alliance identifiable before the election. Its parties have an established history of cooperation and occupy a broadly recognizable area of Israel’s political landscape.
Their differences remain significant. Disputes over ultra-Orthodox conscription have repeatedly exposed divisions within Netanyahu’s coalition, and United Torah Judaism’s refusal to recommend him to Herzog demonstrates that common electoral interests do not guarantee political unity. Nevertheless, the parties belong to an established governing camp whose alliances and priorities were familiar to voters.
A possible Eisenkot government would confront a different challenge. Its potential partners include figures as politically distant as Avigdor Liberman and Yair Golan, with the additional possibility of parliamentary support from Ra’am or the Joint List. Differences over security, the Palestinian question, religion and state, and Israel’s national identity could complicate the development of a common governing agenda.
These parties also share substantive objectives, including opposition to the outgoing government’s judicial overhaul. Their cooperation cannot be reduced entirely to the familiar rak lo Bibi — “anyone but Bibi” — formula. Opposition to Netanyahu is nevertheless an important factor bringing together political forces whose positions on other questions may be difficult to reconcile.
Here lies the most interesting implication of the Italian experiment.
A majority bonus may allow a relatively coherent and publicly identifiable political bloc to govern, even when that bloc has received less than half the popular vote. A proportional system preserves a closer relationship between votes and seats, while leaving government formation to negotiations that may bring together parties with substantially different programs.
Under the Italian-style calculation, Netanyahu’s 42.12% of valid votes would translate into approximately 54.2% of parliamentary seats. The proportional relationship between votes and representation would be altered, granting additional governing power to a coalition whose political identity had already been presented to voters.
Interestingly, the constitutional legitimacy of such a mechanism has been examined in Italy. In its judgment No. 35 of 2017, the Italian Constitutional Court upheld the majority bonus established by the 2015 electoral law for a party receiving at least 40% of valid votes. The Court considered that threshold compatible with the constitutional principles of electoral equality and parliamentary representation, in light of the competing objectives of government stability and effective decision-making. It also emphasized that electoral bonuses must not produce a disproportionate distortion of representation.
The judgment concerned an earlier electoral law and cannot be treated as an automatic endorsement of the new Italian system. Its reasoning, however, is particularly relevant to the Israeli comparison: democratic representation and government stability are both constitutionally significant objectives, and electoral legislation must establish a reasonable balance between them.
This brings us to a more fundamental question: what exactly do we mean by political representation?
In Italian labor law, the concept of representativeness has long generated difficult legal questions, particularly in relation to trade unions. Numerical strength matters, alongside the rules governing an organization’s authority to express collective interests and exercise particular legal powers. Political representation operates according to different institutional principles, although a similar conceptual difficulty arises when we attempt to define what makes a representative body genuinely representative.
One possible criterion is quantitative. Under this understanding, a representative parliament should reproduce as faithfully as possible the preferences expressed by voters. The proportion of seats awarded to each party should correspond closely to its share of the vote. Proportional representation has an important advantage from this perspective: it preserves the political diversity of the electorate within the legislature.
A second criterion concerns the qualitative dimension of representation. Citizens vote for political programs, candidates, alliances and expectations about the future exercise of power. The relationship between representatives and represented may therefore also be assessed through the coherence of governing commitments, the compatibility of political programs and the extent to which voters can recognize the government that emerges from their electoral choices.
A third consideration concerns political authorization. What, precisely, have voters authorized when they cast their ballots? Have they endorsed an individual party, a particular coalition, a governing program, or simply a preferred direction for the country? How should that authorization be understood when parties subsequently negotiate agreements that were never presented to the electorate as a common political project?
These dimensions can point in different directions. A parliamentary majority assembled after an election may represent a larger share of voters in numerical terms, even when those voters supported substantially different political objectives. A coalition strengthened through an electoral bonus may represent fewer voters while offering a more recognizable connection between its pre-election commitments and its governing program.
Neither numerical strength nor programmatic coherence provides a complete definition of democratic representation. A coherent political minority does not acquire greater electoral support simply because its parties agree with one another. Equally, the numerical aggregation of parliamentary seats does not guarantee agreement on a common political program.
The distinction between parliamentary representation and government formation deserves particular attention. A parliament may accurately reflect the electorate’s diversity, while the government formed within it depends on agreements that citizens could not evaluate as a unified proposal before voting. A majority bonus may make the governing alternative more identifiable in advance, while reducing the proportional correspondence between votes and seats.
The Israeli election provides an unusually concrete example of this tension. The same votes that produced a fragmented Knesset under proportional representation could have delivered an independent majority to a pre-existing political bloc under the Italian system. Both outcomes would reflect electoral choices through different institutional mechanisms, with significant consequences for the distribution of political power.
Ultimately, the debate over electoral systems cannot be separated from the meaning we assign to representation itself.
Should the primary measure of political representation be quantitative, based on how faithfully parliament reproduces the preferences of the electorate? Or should we also consider its qualitative dimension: the coherence of political programs, the transparency of electoral alliances and the relationship between the commitments presented to voters and the government eventually formed?
When we speak of a representative majority, are we describing a majority of votes, a majority of parliamentary seats, or the degree to which the exercise of political power corresponds to the choices voters believed they were making?
