Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Brother Bennet Loses to Prince Lapid

The Dome of the Rock Lives! Jeremy Gimpel and Hillel Horowitz wont be settling in the Knesset as members of the Parliament. The Likud Beitenu's negative campaign against Naftali Bennett's Bayit Yehudi party seemed to have stopped their rise on the expense of the Likud traditional base, while the undecided center-right voters flocked to Yair Lapid's sane and reasonable party. 

According to Channel 2's exit poll, half of Yesh Atid's voters came from the right, which resulted in Likud Beitenu's fall, and the dramatic shift to the center, one that our prediction couldn't project until the votes started coming in.

The Bayit Yehudi definitely came a long way from the 7 seats they had in the previous Knesset, but to suggest that the party's 11 projected seats would serve as a third hand on the wheel, as Bennett promised defected Likud voters, seems to have been laid to rest. If anything, Lapid will have his hands on the gear, his feet on the brakes, while the Bayit Yehudi would sit seat-belted in the back of the car with the rest of Netanyahu's coalition partners.