Why do Israelis vote for a letter, not a name?
The Committee assigns the letters afresh at every election. At the Knesset 25 election (2022) 40 lists stood, and the letter ז had already carried 9 different names.
More on the same subject: The electoral threshold · How votes become seats · Surplus-vote agreements
In the polling booth you do not vote for a party's name but for a letter. The Elections Committee assigns the letters afresh at every election — so the same letter can be entirely different lists in different years.
What the letter is
Every list that stands is given a letter or a combination of letters, and the ballot slip in the booth carries those and not the list's name. The letter is an administrative assignment: it identifies the ballot slip, not the list. A list that split, merged or changed its name may be given a different letter; a letter that has been freed may be given to an entirely new list.
This site knows 102 letters that have appeared on a ballot slip since 2003. All of them, with the name registered to each →
The example: the letter ז
Why it matters
The letter ז appeared in 9 elections and carried 9 different names — 7 of them without a single word in common with the name before.
Anyone who reads "the history of ז" as if it were one party will see the rise and fall of a body that never existed.
| Election | What was registered to the letter that year | Votes | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Knesset 16 2003 | זעם צדק חברתי | 894 | 0.03% |
| Knesset 17 2006 | לחם | 1,381 | 0.04% |
| Knesset 19 2013 | ארץ חדשה – החזית להפלת שלטון ההון בראשות אלדד יניב ורני בלייר | 28,080 | 0.74% |
| Knesset 20 2015 | כלכלה | 337 | 0.01% |
| Knesset 21 2019 | זהות - תנועה ישראלית יהודית בהנהגת משה פייגלין | 118,031 | 2.74% |
| Knesset 22 2019 | עוצמה כלכלית קולם של העסקים בישראל | 1,193 | 0.03% |
| Knesset 23 2020 | עוצמה ליברלית – כלכלית בראשות גלעד אלפר | 3,781 | 0.08% |
| Knesset 24 2021 | הישראלים | 395 | 0.01% |
| Knesset 25 2022 | שחר כוח חברתי בראשות וג`די טאהר | 430 | 0.01% |
This letter was chosen by a query, not by hand: it is the one that passed most often to a list that shared not a single word with it. Counting distinct names alone would have chosen a letter whose name only swapped one leader's name for another — a change of name, not a change of hands. If a future election reshuffles the letters, the example here will change by itself.
What the site does not do with this
We do not merge names on the grounds that "this is the same party under a new name". That judgement does not exist in the Elections Committee's records, so it is not made here — a letter's page shows the name each election actually registered, and nothing more.
The only evidence of continuity that does not lean on the letter itself is the distance column on the letter pages: the distance on the political map between where the list stood in one election and where it stood the previous time the letter appeared — not necessarily the previous election, since letters skip elections.