If bloggers were representative of the mainstream ...

[IndianaGreen]

If bloggers were representative of the mainstream ...

While polls show the Israeli electorate heading to the right, liberals online talks up environmentalism and opposition to the Gaza war

Assuming the polls are accurate – and they have been quite consistent – Israeli voters are poised to elect a rightwing government in next week's elections. But if bloggers were representative of the mainstream, Israel's next government would probably be a Jewish-Arab coalition of socialists, social democrats and environmentalists.

The disparity between the polls and the blogosphere is quite remarkable – especially in Tel Aviv, Israel's liberal heartland, where the two parties vying for the votes of hipsters and leftist intellectuals are the Green Movement-Meimad, an environmentalist–religious partnership headed by a liberal rabbi; and Hadash, a Jewish-Arab socialist party.

The Hebrew-language blogger Ori Katzir made a survey of 92 prominent political bloggers. According to the final breakdown, the Green Movement-Meimad leads with 30 supporters, while Hadash comes in second with 27. It is the polar opposite of the opinion polls, which show Likud leading and Avigdor Lieberman's hardline Yisrael Beiteinu poised to tie with Labour.

Hadash's rise among liberal-left, urban Jewish voters is particularly interesting. By definition a non-Zionist party that attracted most of its support from Arabs, Hadash traditionally won three or four seats in the 120-seat Knesset. Even in ultra-liberal Tel Aviv, a vote for Hadash was, until these elections, considered a radical vote.

Now this has changed, partly because of the recently ended Gaza military offensive, and partly because Dov Khenin, number three on the Hadash list, recently ran a failed but vigorous campaign for mayor of Tel Aviv.

Khenin's campaign brought together a diverse list of candidates that ran the gamut from Mizrachi Likud supporters to Arab feminists; the unifying factors were affordable housing, clean air and green public spaces. With that campaign, they succeeded in gathering enough support to threaten the three-term incumbent. Khenin garnered most of his support from local bloggers, who campaigned on his behalf via social media such as YouTube and Facebook. Many of them spent a lot of time with Khenin, and were impressed by the soft-spoken, modest politician and his social-democratic, inclusive agenda.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2009/feb/03/israel-election-bloggers

http://www.maki.org.il/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2338&Itemid=106

[oberliner]

1. And Ron Paul would be President of the US

What an interesting world it would be if bloggers were representative of the mainstream.

[whosinpower]

2. Maybe....

It isn't who votes that counts.....but who counts the votes?

A similiar parallel could be made in 2004(?) when Bush was re elected. Bloggers were all over Kerry - and it was thought he would win quite handily. We all know how that turned out.