We might have expected the various parties' chase after the "Russian vote" to be a major factor in the upcoming election. But in fact, it seems that for the first time in three decades, political forces' interest in this large sector has waned. Plenty of parties on both the Right and the Left have given up on slotting immigrants from the former Soviet Union into realistic places on their lists, and if we've already gotten used to not hearing Russian accents in the ranks of Labor and Meretz, the decisions by Benny Gantz on the Center-Left and New Right co-leaders Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked to leave immigrants from the FSU off their new lists – at a time when places have been found for representatives of much smaller immigrant groups, like the French – came as a surprise to many.
Since the gates of the FSU were opened and the massive waves of Russian immigration to Israel began in 1989, the votes of Russian-speaking immigrants have been a deciding factor in Knesset elections. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the "Russian vote" has been a decisive, not just a significant, factor in every election since. Most Russian-speaking immigrants lean Right, in the direction of the nationalist camp, and that broke the stalemate between the left-wing and right-wing blocs that was established in the 1980s. The only two times the Left has won since then (Yitzhak Rabin in 1992 and Ehud Barak in 1999) were because it was smart enough to attract the support of a lot of Russian speakers.
In the Yisrael Beytenu party today, only three of the top six candidates were born in the FSU. The fact that the phenomenon has affected even the party identified with Russian immigrants has caused people to wonder whether the "Russian vote" still exists and whether it still has influence on the nation's political map. Professor Zeev Hanin, a political science lecturer at Ariel University and Bar-Ilan University and an expert in Russian-speaking Jewry in Israel and the Diaspora, claims that the reports of the death of the "Russian public" in Israel are both premature and overblown.
"The disappearance of the Russian-speaking community is a fantasy," Hanin claims.
"But it turns out that this fantasy is so alluring that a lot of parties believe it. The truth is different – when you probe the worldview of Jews from the FSU and ask them about how they identify ideologically and politically, the results are different from the picture being painted for most of the Israeli public. That hasn't changed, not even three decades after the start of the massive wave of [Russian] aliyah. In-depth polls I've seen conducted in mid-2017 show that more than 60% of Russian-speaking Israelis define themselves as 'moderate right' and another 15-20% as farther right than that," Hanin says.
And how is the Center-Left doing in this sector? Those same surveys prove that there is almost no identification with the Left among immigrants from the FSU.
"Only 3% of those polled defined themselves as left-wing, and only 15-20% identified as 'center.' The political views of immigrants who arrived as very young children, but who were raised here, were also checked. They tend toward the Right, but are more moderate than their parents' generation. The same goes for Israeli-born children of Russian parents."
Dmitri Gendelman, the owner of a leading Russian-language ad firm in Israel, agrees with these distinctions. Gendelman, who has worked with the Likud in the past two elections, is busy with the pragmatic aspects of the Russian immigrant public and is able to translate Hanin's academic conclusion into the language of politics and seats.
"Russian-speaking immigrants have an electoral weight of about 18 seats, and most of those will go to right-wing parties. The internal polls that have been conducted over the course of four years confirm that. Although internal polls tend to be biased and not representative of the general public, because of the large number of respondents they can point to trends," Gendelman says.
However, he warns that in the 2015 election, only 61% of immigrants from the FSU voted, less than other Jewish Israelis. That can be explained by the news events that surrounded that election – the massive corruption scandal that was exposed just before the election did terrible damage to Yisrael Beytenu and caused some of Lieberman's supporters to stay home.
According to Gendelman, there are definite difference between the average Russian supporter of Lieberman and Russian-speaking Likud voters.
"They are both right-wing, oppose giving up territory to the Arabs, and the 'socialist'-style economy. But the more the immigrants see themselves as Israeli, the more they start supporting the Likud. It's a matter of self-identification, and naturally, Lieberman depended on the older people, not to say the elderly.
"By the way, even to immigrants who have integrated it's very important to see Russian speakers represented on party lists, such as the nice representation by Yuli Edelstein and Zeev Elkin on the Likud list. In that sense, Bennett and Shaked made a big mistake: the New Right could have been a political home for a lot of immigrants from Russia and the post-Soviet states. Now … those votes will be split between all the right-wing parties."
Yisrael Beytenu's dependence on older immigrants, some of whom passed away in the 20 years the party has existed, was to its detriment. Party leader Avigdor Lieberman spotted that, and this time tried to skew the list younger. Gendelman thinks that this time around, Lieberman will run an aggressive campaign in which he takes on the Likud and the religious parties as a way of attracting young voters. The Likud, however, will not attack Lieberman and will have to be satisfied with general calls to Russian speakers not to waste their votes on parties that have no chance.
Hanin and Gendelman both think that Gantz will find it difficult to reach the "Russian public." In a situation in which the Left's electoral base among Russian-speaking immigrants is tiny, Gantz would have to hope that his merger with Yesh Atid will help him but that doesn't appear likely. About 15% of "Russians" might have been willing to support Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid – who take a firm line against the haredi parties – but that number has dropped by half since he joined forces with Gantz. The moderate Right that saw Lapid as an option has reconsidered.
