Avigdor Liberman, head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, laid out his strategy for defeating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an opinion piece published in the Israeli daily Maariv, focusing heavily on voter participation rates as the decisive factor.
A central element of Liberman's argument concerns raising overall turnout in Israeli elections. He compared recent election participation, which stood below 71%, with the 1988 elections when nearly 80% of eligible voters cast ballots.
In his analysis, he pointed to high turnout among ultra-Orthodox and national-religious voters, adding a familiar barb: "It's important to emphasize that the voting rate of the ultra-Orthodox and national-religious public is very high. As we've learned more than once in the past, among the ultra-Orthodox even the dead exercise their civic right to vote on election day."
By contrast, the Yisrael Beiteinu chairman argued that what he termed "the Israeli mainstream, the working and serving public" shows lower participation rates, particularly in the greater Tel Aviv and Sharon regions.
