INCREASED PERSONALISATION IN AN UNSTABLE PARTY SYSTEM: THE 2013 ELECTIONS IN ISRAEL

More than one third of the Israeli voters changed their vote from the 2009 elections to the 2013 elections, yet most stayed within 'their' camp (either the right-religious or the centre-left). But it was the few who changed their vote that made the difference. Likud kept its control of the pivotal position and leads the new government, but an unprecedented alliance between the centrist-secular Yesh Atid and the right-religious Jewish Home-based on socio-economic issues, not the predominant security factor in Israeli politics, and personal relations between the party leaders-forced Likud to establish a coalition that excluded the ultra-religious parties it had sat in government with since the 2009 elections.