The Green Line and the Security Fence:

4
chronologically close. Elections that occurred earlier, in 1988 and 1992, and those
following in 1999, 2001, and 2003, though taking place at regular intervals, are three or
more years away from any census. As a result, only the elections in 1996 and, to some
extent, 1999, can be paired with reliable data for the overall Israeli population, though
they took place during a turbulent period of social and economic changes in Israel.
Though one more census, conducted in June 1983, could be similarly paired with the
1984 elections, a crucial factor was missing: the direct election of the prime minister,
which took place only in 1996, 1999, and 2001.
Shamir and Arian (1999) found that ethnicity and religiosity have decisive roles in the
outcome of those three elections; the same result for the 1999 and 2001 elections was
confirmed by Shalev and Kis (2002) and Andersen and Yaish (2003). Let us note, inter
alia, that although the latter two papers considered ethnicity and religiosity as control
parameters rather than the target of their research, they oversimplified their treatment of
the ethnicity factor by dividing the voters into Ashkenazim (European/American origin)
and Sephardim/Oriental Jews (African/Asian origin). 1
First, this is imprecise
etymologically: Bulgarian and Romanian Jews are mainly Sephardim and vote
haphazardly. Second, it is not clear how Turkish Jews vote. Third, North American Jews,
though Ashkenazim, vote the opposite of European Jews: Right, not Left.
An important methodological insight made by the authors, who wrote after 1996, was
their pointing to unique opportunities provided by Israel’s 1996 electoral reform. While
the preferences of the Israeli voter are complex and inseparable (De Marchi and