In a final flurry of activity on Monday, the Joint Arab List worked to secure every possible vote from its "base" in the Arab sector ahead of Tuesday's election.
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Joint Arab List Chairman MK Ayman Odeh, faction chairman MK Ahmad Tibi, and the list's remaining candidates met with many supporters in their homes up until the last moment.
The message they sought to convey to the supporters is that a low voter turnout rate in the Arab sector would likely benefit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and severely impact the faction's electoral and political influence.
The fact that JAL is competing head-to-head with former faction partner the Ra'am party, headed by MK Mansour Abbas, is a source of considerable stress for JAL and its campaign managers. According to a senior JAL campaign official, the most recent polls indicated that Ra'am was gaining strength among Arab voters.
The latest polls have also indicated positive momentum for Netanyahu's Likud party, while JAL has been polling at around seven-eight mandates.
"It's possible the campaign strategy of focusing on the Arab voter base didn't work," said the senior JAL campaign official. "We lost many votes in the Arab sector, and also among left-wing voters who aren't Arabs who voted for us previously."
The Ra'am party, for its part, was exuding cautious optimism and hope in the wake of the latest polls, which predicted the party would pass the electoral threshold.
A senior official at the party's election headquarters said that more detailed polling conducted by Ra'am officials in recent days even pointed to more mandates than JAL at its expense.
"The decision to go head-to-head with the Joint List for Arab votes was a brilliant strategy, which is thus far proving itself," the official said. "We focused on our voter base, and the Arab public understood the message that while the Joint List is busy with the Israeli left, the LGBTQ community and other diplomatic issues that don't interest the sector, Ra'am is working on behalf of Arab society and investing all its energy in the Arab public."
With that, the official said Ra'am leaders were concerned about voter apathy. "We must stress to our voting public how important it is this time to go out and vote because every vote is crucial, especially for a sectorial party such as Ra'am," he said.
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