“I remember our first victory in 1996 was historic, but this time is even sweeter because it is a victory against all odds,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu March 2 after the release of the television exit polls. It was no coincidence that Netanyahu decided to begin his election night speech by comparing what had just happened to his 1996 victory after Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. By doing this, he encompassed the entire story of the 2020 election. While Netanyahu failed to win 61 seats and a decisive victory, he could take credit for an enormous achievement. He succeeded in restoring the Likud’s status as the largest party in the Knesset, and he strengthened his right-wing, ultra-Orthodox bloc, which emerged from the election with three more seats than it won in September 2019.

It is still too early to know what the next few days will bring and whether a fourth round of elections is a real option. What is certain, however, is that the alliance between the victims of discrimination, which brought a 46-year-old Netanyahu to power in May 1996, is the same alliance, with a few tweaks, which is helping him keep the Prime Minister’s Office for the foreseeable future, even if it is just days before the start of his trial for bribery, fraud and the violation of trust, scheduled for March 17.

Thanks to the support he received from the ultra-Orthodox, Mizrahim (of Middle Eastern origin), Ethiopian immigrants, periphery towns and the middle class, Netanyahu will not be evacuating his residence on Balfour Street in the foreseeable future. All it takes is a quick scan of the voter breakdown to see that the Likud’s major centers of support are, once again, the towns and villages in the country’s north and south — the poorer, periphery towns. They even include towns like Sderot that are being battered by rockets from Gaza. Netanyahu got stronger in all of these places, helped along by his campaign message that he is being persecuted by the left, the police and the media. Of course, this campaign reached new heights as his legal proceedings got even more tangled.

Netanyahu did it with a “revivalist” campaign of sorts that he carried the length and breadth of the country. In the last few days alone, he actually contacted people personally through phone calls and even knocking on doors. In contrast, the Blue and White party did not manage to fill the role it chose for itself from that party’s very inception. It never succeeded in becoming a warm home for disenchanted Likud supporters. In this election, it actually got weaker in the traditional Likud bastions. Instead, it earned the reputation of being a draw for established, wealthy Ashkenazi voters with left-wing leanings who live in the influential big cities. There were, of course, many Mizrahi Jews who voted Blue and White and Ashkenazim who voted Likud. But what it really means is that Likud, ultra-Orthodox, and Yamina voters all share that same sense of exclusion, which helps to shape their political identity.