Despite the surprising weakness of the Right-ultra-Orthodox bloc, the final result of the elections, according to exit polls, is still likely to be a status-quo Netanyahu-led government. Why? Because the big winner in this election, media personality Yair Lapid, is a vapid centrist who is likely to join Netanyahu’s coalition and make little noise on policy -- either on Israel-Palestine, or any other topic The exit-poll results are in, and Noam has an excellent summary of the headline figures. A lot of the attention, as actual results pour in through the night, will be focused on the balance between the…

I would like to address some of the responses to my previous post ("It's all about the blocs: Understanding Israeli election polls"), since they raise an important issue regarding the difference between an analysis of ideology and political behavior. Several readers challenged my use of the right vs. left division of the entire political system in Israel, claiming it to be simplistic and not matching the ideology of some of the parties. Several examples were made, mostly regarding what I called the center-left bloc. As "Kolumn9" rightly noted, Kadima is an offspring of the Likud, and ideologically could just the…