"The only hope anyone has to avoid another election beyond this one, if as expected it doesn't produce an unequivocal outcome, is fraud. And the electorate is fine with that, broadly speaking."
Jerusalem, September 28 - An increasing number of Israelis see nothing but continued government dysfunction and paralysis because of a fractured polity that has failed multiple times to hand a convincing mandate to either of the two major political factions over the last five years and shows no sign of healing, surveys indicate, unless one side or the other can cheat enough to gain power and cement itself there for a decent amount of time, or so they hope.
Numerous polls in the last month have borne out a growing segment of the electorate that prefers either the pro-Netanyahu or anti-Netanyahu just engage in whatever fraud necessary to achieve the 61 Knesset seats necessary to form a governing coalition, because at this point no one expects either faction to garner enough votes in elections scheduled for November 1. The contest will mark the fifth time is as many years Israelis will cast ballots, with none of the contests since 2015 a clear victory for any party or alliance. An attempt by a diverse, contradictory array of anti-Netanyahu parties to form and hold together a coalition failed earlier this year, setting up the November elections, but few reliable surveys project 61 seats for parties willing to join a coalition with Netanyahu's Likud Party at the helm.
"People just want it to be over, in the quickest way possible," observed a researcher from the statistical firm Saymol Saymol. "Had the incumbent Bennett-Lapid government been able to achieve anything beyond the same paralysis that twelve years of Netanyahu's leadership offered, we might face a different forecast, but the anti-Bibi faction has shown itself just as incompetent or unwilling to take decisive action on any of the issues that Netanyahu proved himself reluctant. The few remaining voter s who care tend toward the conservative end of the spectrum, which gives the pro-Netanyahu group an edge, but not a decisive one. The only hope anyone has to avoid another election beyond this one, if as expected it doesn't produce an unequivocal outcome, is fraud. And the electorate is fine with that, broadly speaking."
Informal surveys of voters confirmed the trend. "Yeah, someone should have figured this out three election cycles ago," lamented one capital resident who gave his name as Guy. "Faith in the institutions of government was already cratering. It's not like there's any credibility left that large-scale electoral fraud would damage. Just do a good job, don't make it obvious, and get your agenda in legislative swing. Let's go."