High Voter Turn Out on the Left, Low on the Right, Netanyahu Calls it a “Disaster”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu battled for his political survival in the final hours of a close-run election on Tuesday, urging voters to support him to avert a “disaster.”
His voice hoarse from weeks of campaigning, the veteran leader took to the streets and social media, at one point using a megaphone in Jerusalem’s bus station, to urge voters to extend his unbroken decade in power.
Opinion polls put former armed forces chief Benny Gantz’s centrist Blue and White party neck-and-neck with Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud, and suggest the secular nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party could emerge as kingmaker in coalition talks.
Prohibited by law from campaigning on mainstream media, party leaders took to social networks to mobilize support.
Describing a possible outcome if his supporters did not vote for him, Netanyahu wrote on Twitter: “High voting percentage in left-wing strongholds. Voting percentages low in right-wing strongholds. Disaster!”
Without their support, “we will get a left-wing government with Arab parties,” he wrote.
