When the chairman of Yisrael Beitenu, Knesset member Avigdor Liberman, decided to sign a surplus vote agreement with the Blue and White party, he certainly took into account that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would use it as a cudgel against him. And in fact, it was just 10 minutes after the official announcement of the agreement Aug. 20 that the Likud attacked Liberman for having joined forces with the left.

For many long weeks now, all of Netanyahu’s efforts to chip away at Liberman’s Russian votes have been in vain. Polls show that Yisrael Beitenu is as steady as a rock. Netanyahu even took the time to pay an official visit to Ukraine Aug. 18, with a wink at Russian-speaking voters in Israel. The announcement of the surplus vote agreement between Liberman and Blue and White caught him in Kyiv. In a special video clip shot in his hotel room, Netanyahu attacked Liberman in response to this new development, saying, “It pains me to say this, but as of today it is official. Liberman is transferring votes from the right to a left-wing government.”

Liberman wasn’t upset at all. He seemed to revel in this opportunity to fire back at Netanyahu. In a video of his own, he claimed, “Netanyahu is feeling the pressure. … The surplus agreement between Yisrael Beitenu and the Blue and White party has no political significance. It is a technical agreement only.”

Of course, this is not very accurate. While it is true that voter surplus agreements are technical, they almost always have political significance. It is a means for the two parties that signed the agreement to get another seat with their surplus votes, after the first calculation of seats is made. That's why surplus voter agreements are almost always signed by parties with similar ideologies or common political interests. In most elections in which it participated, Yisrael Beitenu signed voter surplus agreements with parties on the right: the Likud, the New Right and even Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu. On the other side of the political spectrum, Labor and Meretz generally sign voter surplus agreements between them.