Election Results for Buchman

[UPDATED: I missed one ballot box in Gan Arbel. Thanks, Richie. The new data does not significantly alter the trends already noted: Slim majority for right-wing parties, and relatively strong showing for Likud and Moderate-to-left religious parties. The only surprise was Labor's strong showing at Kadima's expense.

Also, UTJ got 9 votes in the neighborhood. I think I can figure out a few of them, but 9 is more than I expected. Also, Hadash got 2 votes. Given that Buchman is as bougeoise as you can get, I think that these commies are in the wrong hood.]

I’ve tabulated the election results for the four polling stations at the Shivtei Yisrael school in Buchman. The data are based on the Knesset’s election results website. I only included tallies for parties that carried over 2% of the local vote. For some reason, city-wide results have not been tabulated, and the results for Modiin are included within the results for the Ramle region(and given the presence of cities such as Lod, Ramle, and Modiin Illit within that region, the regional results do not in any way reflect what the overall Modiin results would look like).

Here they are:

Party	Total Votes	% of Votes	National Avg (%)
Likud	859	32.76	21.39
Kadima	697	26.58	22.52
Labor	359	13.69	9.85
Bayit Yehudi	308	11.75	2.82
National Union	101	3.85	3.28
Greens-Meimad	73	2.78	0.82
Meretz	70	2.67	2.93
Israel Our Home	67	2.56	11.60
Shas	54	2.06	8.54

Total ballots cast: 2629

Qualifying ballots: 2622

Analysis:

These results tell us a lot about the composition of the neighborhood. Labor and Kadima both outperformed their national averages, and Meretz stayed virtually the same (underperformed by 4 votes). The fourth left-wing party (Green-Meimad) outperformed its national average by nearly 400%; more on that later.

With regard to the right-wing parties, the Likud garnered 50% more than its national average, but the second-largest right wing party, Israel Our Home, was the worst underperformer amongst major/ non-sectarian (i.e., non-Arab, non-Haredi) parties.

The (non-Haredi) parties with religious agendas - Green-Meimad, National Union, and Bayit Yehudi – all did better than their national averages. However, whereas NU got maybe 15 or so more votes than the national average would project, both Bayit Yehudi and Green-Meimad beat their national averages by high-triple-digit orders of magnitude. This would indicate that the neighborhood has an above average number of religious residents (surprising given the lack of synagogues and mikva’ot in the neighborhood), and that its religious residents tend toward the more politically moderate than the yishuv-dwelling Religious Zionists.

However, assuming that only religious people voted for NU, Green-Meimad, Bayit Yehudi, and Shas – an assumption that is by no means assured – that means that barely 20% of the neighborhood (which is estimated to be 40-50% religious; the thing about synagogues was facetious and sarcastic) voted for religious parties. Where did the rest of them go?

It is hard to break this down, but the answer seems to be primarily to the Likud. It is quite possible that Buchman has more right-wing secularists than the national average, but Lieberman’s poor performance suggests otherwise. Assuming that all of the Likud’s “outperformance” votes were accounted for by religious voters, and then considering that religious voters made up a solid proportion of Likud’s voters in general, it seems likely that 50% or more of the Likud’s local support came from religious voters.

Consider it from a different perspective: About 44% of the neighborhood voted for secular-leaning parties (Labor, Kadima, Israel Our Home, Meretz), and about 23% voted for religious-leaning parties (Shas, NU, Bayit Yehudi, and Meimad-Green). Lets assume that religious voters for secular parties offset the secular voters for religious parties. If you split Likud right down the middle, you end up with a neighborhood that is 40% religious and 60% secular, with a politically moderate religious community (meaning center-right, not extreme right) and a politically left secular community. Sounds about right.

In general, almost 59% of neighborhood voters cast ballots for the two largest parties (as opposed to a national average of about 44%). This is generally attributable to the lack of special-interest groups (Haredim and Arabs) in the neighborhood, but it might also mean that people here tend to cast their votes pragmatically as opposed to ideologically. I view that as a healthy sign.