The Joint List’s success in the 2020 election was entirely unprecedented. The two Arab parties that competed in the April 2019 election (Hadash-Ta’al and Ra’am-Balad) won 10 seats, while the Joint List (composed of four essentially Arab parties: Hadash, Ta’al, Ra’am and Balad) won 13 seats in September 2019. Now the Joint List has 15 seats. Similarly, there was a noticeable rise in the percentage of eligible voters in Arab and Druze villages, who actually went out to vote. Their number increased from 49% in April to 59% in September to 65% now.
Two of the most prominent characteristics of this success are the desire, which many young Arabs have, to integrate into Israeli society, resulting in more Arabs voting, and a real increase in the number of Jews, who voted for the Joint List. According to the party’s own data, some 20,000 Jews voted for it. This amounts to about half a seat.