BIG PARTIES SPEND BIG BUCKS ON BIG DAY

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 TEL AVIV 001197 SIPDIS SENSITIVE DEPT FOR NEA/IPA E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PREL PGOV KDEM IS PINR GOI INTERNAL ELECTIONS SUBJECT: BIG PARTIES SPEND BIG BUCKS ON BIG DAY (C-NE6-00442) ¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY: While Kadima and Likud have budgets for election day at least 50 percent larger than that of the Labor Party, Labor will draw on an extensive and experienced organizational network at the local level. Kadima party organizers say they must work particularly hard to get out the vote, since centrist voters tend to stay at home on election day more often than do voters on either end of the political spectrum. While Kadima organizers admit that they lack enough high quality local leaders to operate the number of local party branches they would like to have, they claim that their get-out-the-vote effort will benefit from the recent conversion of almost half of Israel's 256 mayors to Kadima. Likud, by contrast, has lost a significant number of its local leaders to Kadima, and appears to have suffered from a drop in the number of local election volunteers. END SUMMARY. -------------- --- PARTIES APPLY SIMILAR STRATEGY: MONITOR AND CALL -------------- --- ¶2. (SBU) Leaders of the get-out-the-vote campaigns in Labor, Likud and Kadima have all articulated similar basic strategies: prevent fraud by placing official party observers in the country's 8,200 polling stations; organize local activities by establishing party branches in many of Israel's 256 municipalities; contact voters by phone in areas where monitors report low turnouts at the polling stations; divert fewer resources than in the past to transporting voters to the polls; and spend more money than in the past on phone calls to voters. -------------- LABOR: SMALL BUDGET, MANY VOLUNTEERS -------------- ¶3. (SBU) The Labor Party's national get-out-the-vote chairman, Arieh Ami, told poloff March 23 that the Labor Party will call on 40,000 volunteers to monitor polling stations, call voters at home, and transport voters to the polls. He described his volunteers as "very experienced" and said that at least 5,000, whom he termed a "huge help" and "very important," are associated with the Histadrut Labor Federation. Amis said that the Labor Party has spread its resources across 110 Jewish and 100 Arab cities and towns, more, he claimed, than either of the other major parties. Labor will spend, Ami said, some USD 1.5 million on election day, which he described as less than the party used in the last elections. Labor believes it has developed an advantage, Ami said, by drawing on its volunteers to research old membership lists dating back 15 years. Although Labor currently has only about 100,000 members, Ami reported, the party has located through research an additional 600,000 former members. Ami said that Labor volunteers would call all of these people before or during election day in order to persuade them to "return home" to the party. -------------- KADIMA: BIG BUDGET, PATCHY ORGANIZATION -------------- ¶4. (SBU) Yahanon Plesner, number 34 on the Kadima list and co-director of the party's operational branch, told poloff March 26 that Kadima had so far recruited over 16,000 volunteers to help get out the vote, and added that he expected "thousands more" to volunteer by election day. The party will spend, Plesner said, approximately USD 2.6 million on election day, or about one third of the party's entire campaign budget. Plesner said that Kadima has fewer local branches than do the other parties, with 80 branches in urban areas and 40 in smaller towns. Plesner also acknowledged that Kadima faces a special organizational challenge "because we didn't exist three months ago." Accordingly, local leaders must draw on general voter lists from the Ministry of the Interior instead of the party membership lists upon which Labor and Likud can rely. Plesner claimed, however, that the party's Internet membership drive has already recruited over 15,000 dues-paying members, and that some 30,000 more have signed up at the local level as members, but have not yet officially registered and paid. Ishai Peretz, Kadima's get-out-the-vote organizer for northern cities, told poloff that Kadima also faces "huge disparities" in the quality of its local branch management. With a lack of national structures and institutions, Peretz admitted, Kadima relies more on the quality of local leaders. Peretz added that Kadima needs to succeed more than the other parties in getting out the vote, since the profile of typical Kadima voters is "sober and rational, less exuberant and ideological," and hence more "tempted to sit at home" than the "hard core idealists." ¶5. (SBU) Kadima's strength, however, will derive from "recent converts" at the local level, according to Plesner. There are many such converts, according to Beersheva Mayor Yaakov Terner and Deputy Mayor Sima Navon. Terner told poloff March 23 that he left Labor to join Kadima in January; Navon said she left Likud at the same time to join Kadima. They also reported that 110 out of Israel's 256 mayors expressed their allegiance to Kadima at a national mayor's conference held two weeks ago. Navon added that 10 more Kadima mayors did not attend the conference, while many others sympathize with Kadima but have not yet announced their new party membership. -------------- LIKUD: BIG BUDGET, FEWER VOLUNTEERS -------------- ¶6. (SBU) The Labor Party's Arieh Ami claimed that local defections to Kadima have hurt Likud more than they have hurt Labor. "Likud is facing major problems because they have lost branch offices," Ami said. "Their organization has collapsed." Likud's director of operations, Asaf Itzhaki, refuted this claim while explaining to poloff March 27 that the party has "thousands" of volunteers. He declined, however, to specify how many volunteers, suggesting the number might be fewer than 10,000. He told poloff that the party will spend some USD 2.2 million -- one third of the total campaign budget -- to get out the vote on election day. To ensure that they reach former Likud voters, Itzhaki explained, Likud volunteers will draw on the Ministry of Interior's general voter list to supplement the Likud membership list. ********************************************* ******************** Visit Embassy Tel Aviv's Classified Website: http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/nea/telaviv You can also access this site through the State Department's Classified SIPRNET website. ********************************************* ******************** JONES