One winner, two winners, no winners: The 2009 elections in Israel

In the February 2009 elections, the Israeli voter apparently swung to the right. Electoral change can be summed up as a net shift of 15 seats out of 120 towards the right-religious bloc. While Kadima won the most seats as an individual party, when counted together with the five other left-of-centre parties, the left had only 55 seats in total. Likud on the other hand came in a close second in terms of seats won as an individual party, but counted together with the five religious and right-wing parties they controlled a majority bloc of 65 seats. To this we must add the shift of control of the pivotal position to the right, from Kadima to Likud. These are the reasons why Netanyahu and his Likud party-who won one seat less than Kadima-formed the new coalition government.