Understandably, the foreign press searched for the voters’ statement on foreign affairs, where Netanyahu’s hawkishness was indeed dealt a setback. The overall vote for him and his allies on that front shrank by some 2% of the electorate.
However, while on foreign affairs the voter movement was marginal, and may prove even smaller once the soldiers’ ballots are fully counted, on domestic affairs voters espoused a centrism whose appeal Netanyahu had failed to detect. This is what caused the phenomenal success of the election’s big winner, Yair Lapid.
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