Where Does a Lost Vote Go?

What happens to the votes for a list that doesn't pass the threshold. Tuesday 27 October 2026 / 16 Cheshvan 5787.

Aryeh Leib Thorne Toren

Full disclosure: I have a bias. I voted for the Religious Zionist Party.

This piece takes no side. It answers one question I keep seeing in replies today, in English and in Hebrew: if a list misses the threshold, do its votes “wander” to some other list, like the Joint List?

No. They don’t go to anyone.

What the law says

Section 81 of the Knesset Elections Law [Consolidated Version], 5729-1969, sets the order:

• Only lists with at least 3.25% of all valid votes take part in dividing the seats (81(a)).
• The valid votes of those lists, and only those lists, are added up and divided by 120. The whole number is the quota: how many votes buy one seat (81(b)).
• Each list gets one seat for every full quota it holds (81(c)).
• The seats left over go out one at a time. Each round, a list’s votes are divided by its seats plus one, and the highest result takes the seat (81(d)). That’s the Bader–Ofer method. The rest of the world calls it d’Hondt.
• Two lists that signed a surplus-vote agreement count as one list at that last stage only (section 82). If one of the two didn’t pass, the agreement falls away, and its votes don’t move to its partner either.

So the votes for a list under 3.25% are set aside before a single seat is counted. They don’t migrate. What changes is the quota. Fewer counted votes means fewer votes per seat, so every list that passed gets a little more for the votes it already has.

The math

• Eligible voters: 7,331,981.
• If turnout is 70% (a round number for the math, not a forecast), that’s about 5.13 million votes. I’m treating that as the valid-vote total. The real figure will be a bit lower, since some ballots are disqualified.
• 3.25% of 5.13 million is about 167,000 votes. That’s the line.
• 3.25% of 120 seats is 3.9 seats, yet a list that passes nearly always gets 4. Here’s why. The quota is worked out only from the votes of lists that passed. Once some votes are set aside, a list sitting right at 3.25% holds a bigger share of the counted votes. If at least 2.5% of all votes are set aside, that list holds at least 4.0 quotas, so 4 full seats (3.25 ÷ 97.5 × 120 = 4.0). If almost nothing is set aside, it holds about 3.9 quotas, and its fourth seat comes down to the leftover stage. Since the threshold went up to 3.25% for the 2015 election, every list that passed has entered with at least 4 seats.

A worked example: a lost 2%

Say one list gets 2% of 5.13 million, about 102,600 votes, and misses.

• The quota drops from about 42,770 votes a seat (5.13 million ÷ 120) to about 41,910 (5.03 million ÷ 120).
• Every list that passed now holds 1 ÷ 0.98 of its old share of the counted votes, about 2% more.
• A list with 25% of the valid votes goes from 30 seats’ worth to about 30.6.
• A list with 10% goes from 12 to about 12.2.
• A list with 5% goes from 6 to about 6.1.

The 2.4 seats’ worth that the missing list’s voters would have filled is spread across every list that passed, in proportion to its size. Seats come in whole numbers, so the leftover stage settles who gets the fractions, and that stage leans slightly toward bigger lists and toward pairs with surplus agreements. No one list gets the votes.

What this means for you

This isn’t advice on whom to vote for. It’s how the count works. Vote for the list you believe in.

Voting ends at 22:00. If you’re in line by 22:00, you vote.

I encourage all eligible voters to vote.

All glory to the Ribono shel Olam · Errors are mine

Prepared in deep partnership and cooperation with Grok and xAI

Sources (all checked 27 October 2026)

• Knesset Elections Law [Consolidated Version], 5729-1969, sections 81 (threshold, quota, Bader–Ofer) and 82 (surplus-vote agreements). Unofficial English translation; the Hebrew text in Reshumot is binding: https://israelilegislation.com/laws/knesset-elections-law-consolidated-version-1969/p-13/
• Section 82(a) and an agreement with a list that fails being void, in Hebrew: https://israelvoting.com/glossary/surplus-agreement
• Knesset Lexicon, “Distribution of Knesset Seats (Bader-Ofer Method)”. This older page still gives the earlier 2% threshold; the method is unchanged: https://main.knesset.gov.il/en/about/lexicon/pages/seats.aspx
• Israel Democracy Institute, “Vote-Sharing Agreements”, including that an agreement with a list that fails is meaningless because its votes aren’t counted: https://en.idi.org.il/articles/47485
• Knesset Research and Information Center, surplus-agreement study (Hebrew), stages of the count: https://fs.knesset.gov.il/globaldocs/MMM/0e2a5af0-9732-e811-80de-00155d0a0235/2_0e2a5af0-9732-e811-80de-00155d0a0235_11_6854.pdf
• 7,331,981 eligible voters, 27 October 2026: https://t.me/almogboker78/18523 · Haaretz explainer: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/2026-10-27/ty-article/how-do-i-vote-all-you-need-to-know-before-casting-your-ballot/000001a1-7c6e-d429-afa5-ffee5e120000
• At least 4 seats for every list that passed, 2015 to 2022 (smallest: Kulanu and Ra’am–Balad with 4 in April 2019, Ra’am with 4 in 2021, Labor with 4 in 2022), from the official results as listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Israeli_legislative_election, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_2019_Israeli_legislative_election, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_2019_Israeli_legislative_election, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Israeli_legislative_election, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Israeli_legislative_election and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Israeli_legislative_election
• The arithmetic (70% of 7,331,981 = 5,132,387; 3.25% of that = 166,803; 5,132,387 ÷ 120 = 42,770; 5,029,739 ÷ 120 = 41,914) is mine and shown in full above.

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