Every democracy contains within it a place where the nation's contradictions resolve into something like a portrait — a city that votes not as a tribe but as a country. In Israel, that place is Rehovot, where the 2022 election results mirrored the national outcome with an average deviation of just two percentage points across thirteen parties. Its predictive power arises not from any single identity but from the absence of a dominant one — a demographic middle ground where secular and religious, left and right, share the same streets and the same ballot boxes.
Rehovot remains Israel's electoral bellwether, mirroring national voting patterns
No single bloc swallows up the rest.
Mark
So Rehovot votes almost exactly like the country does. What makes that happen? Is it random?
Mimi
Not random at all. It's a city with real diversity—you've got Likud voters, Yesh Atid supporters, religious parties, secular voters. No single group dominates. That mix happens to match the national breakdown.
Luke
But we should be careful here. The analysis only looked at cities over 50,000 people. That's a built-in filter. And it's measuring 2022 results against 2022 national results—it's not actually predicting anything yet.
Mark
Right, so it's backward-looking. It's saying Rehovot reflected what already happened, not that it will predict what comes next.
Mimi
Exactly. The comparison to Ohio is interesting but also a warning. Ohio was predictive for decades, then stopped being. Rehovot had the same problem in the 2010s—the elections were too fragmented and inconclusive for any city to be a reliable bellwether.
Luke
And the CEO of Madlan is making an argument about why these cities work as mirrors—they're "middle Israel," established, central, not too rich or too poor. But that's an interpretation. The data shows the voting patterns; the explanation for why is more speculative.
Mark
So what would actually test whether Rehovot is a bellwether? Would you need to see if it predicts the next election?
Mimi
That's the real test. You'd run the same analysis after the next election and see if Rehovot's results still track the national outcome. If they do, the bellwether claim holds up.
Luke
And we'd want to know: does Rehovot predict the winner, or just reflect the overall vote distribution? Those are different things. Ohio predicted winners; Rehovot just seems to reflect the vote share breakdown.
Mark
That distinction matters for what the story actually means.
Mimi
It does. A bellwether that predicts the winner is one thing. A city that mirrors the national vote share is useful for understanding the country's political center, but it's not the same as forecasting power.
Luke
The data here is solid—the percentages check out, the cities are clearly ranked by deviation from national results. But the predictive claim is still an open question.
El Pulso
- Rehovot's voting patterns tracked Israel's national results so closely in 2022 that analysts are calling it 'Israel's Ohio' — a city where no single bloc dominates and the full political spectrum appears in rough proportion.
- The tension in this story is demographic: cities with strong sectoral identities — ultra-Orthodox, Arab, or affluent secular — diverge sharply from the national picture, revealing how fragmented Israel's political geography has become.
- At the extremes, Modi'in Illit gave 77 percent of its votes to United Torah Judaism while Umm al-Fahm delivered over 78 percent to Arab parties, leaving Jewish parties with less than 5 percent — two cities that might as well be voting in different countries.
- Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, despite their size and symbolic weight, ranked 29th and 28th in similarity to national patterns, undermining their claim to represent the Israeli mainstream.
- The cities that best predict national outcomes share a quiet common trait: they are established, middle-class communities in central Israel where no identity overwhelms the rest — places that hold the country's political center by holding a little of everything.
Every democracy contains within it a place where the nation's contradictions resolve into something like a portrait — a city that votes not as a tribe but as a country. In Israel, that place is Rehovot, where the 2022 election results mirrored the national outcome with an average deviation of just two percentage points across thirteen parties. Its predictive power arises not from any single identity but from the absence of a dominant one — a demographic middle ground where secular and religious, left and right, share the same streets and the same ballot boxes.
A new analysis of Israel's 2022 election results has confirmed what political observers have long suspected: Rehovot is the city that votes most like the country as a whole. Conducted by real estate data firm Madlan and covering every city with more than 50,000 residents, the study found that Rehovot's average deviation from national party results was just 2.05 percentage points — the tightest alignment of any city examined. Likud drew 25.7 percent there versus 23.4 nationally; Yesh Atid took 23.1 percent against 17.8 nationwide; gaps for smaller parties were often less than a single point. Analysts attribute this not to any particular ideology but to the city's demographic breadth — no single bloc dominates, no sectoral identity crowds out the rest.
Rehovot is not alone. Petah Tikva, Haifa, Hadera, Netanya, Holon, and Rosh HaAyin all showed similarly close alignment with national patterns. Haifa stood out as the only top-ten city where Yesh Atid outpaced Likud. Rosh HaAyin, home to Benny Gantz, led in support for both Religious Zionism and his National Unity party — a local reflection of its relatively religious population and its most famous resident.
The comparison to Ohio is deliberate. The American state voted for the presidential winner in every election from 1964 to 2016 before drifting into the Republican column and losing its predictive reputation. Rehovot experienced a similar erosion during Israel's inconclusive election cycle of the late 2010s and early 2020s, but the 2022 results suggest its bellwether status may be returning.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv ranked 28th and 29th. In Jerusalem, ultra-Orthodox parties dominated; in Tel Aviv, Yesh Atid nearly doubled Likud's share and Meretz — which failed to clear the national threshold — nearly became the city's third-largest party. The seven cities classified as most divergent from national patterns are all either ultra-Orthodox or Arab municipalities. Modi'in Illit gave 77.4 percent of its votes to United Torah Judaism; Umm al-Fahm delivered over 78 percent to Arab parties combined, with all Jewish parties together receiving less than 5 percent.
The underlying logic is geographic and demographic. The cities that mirror Israel are medium-to-large, established communities along the coastal plain and central region — neither the wealthiest nor the most disadvantaged, neither the heart of any single political bloc nor its periphery. They are, in essence, middle Israel: places where Likud voters and Yesh Atid supporters share neighborhoods, where religious and secular populations coexist without either achieving dominance. The bellwether cities are those where the country's full political spectrum appears in rough proportion — and where, for that reason, the national will shows up most clearly.
Rehovot has earned a reputation as Israel's electoral mirror—the city where national voting patterns show up most clearly in miniature. A fresh analysis of the 2022 election results, conducted by the real estate data firm Madlan and examining every city with more than 50,000 residents, confirms that reputation once again. The city's voters split their ballots in ways that track the country's overall choices with remarkable precision, making it the most reliable predictor of how Israel as a whole will vote.
The math bears this out. In Rehovot, Likud drew 25.7 percent of the vote compared to 23.4 percent nationally. Yesh Atid took 23.1 percent against 17.8 percent nationwide. Religious Zionism pulled 13 percent versus 10.6 nationally, and National Unity secured 10.5 percent against 9 percent across the country. The gaps for smaller parties like Shas, Yisrael Beytenu, Labor, and Meretz were even tighter—less than a single percentage point. Across the thirteen parties that performed strongest in that election, Rehovot's average deviation from the national result was just 2.05 percentage points. That consistency is not accidental. It reflects a city whose population contains, as one analyst put it, "a little bit of everything"—no single political bloc dominates, no sectoral identity overwhelms the rest.
Rehovot is not alone in this role. Petah Tikva, Haifa, Hadera, Netanya, Holon, and Rosh HaAyin all showed similarly tight alignment with national voting patterns. In Petah Tikva, Likud support reached 28.4 percent, higher than the national figure, while Yesh Atid's 19.7 percent stayed close to its nationwide share. Haifa presented an interesting wrinkle: it was the only city in the top ten where Yesh Atid actually outpaced Likud, winning 26.3 percent to Likud's 20.9 percent. Hadera and Netanya, both in the Sharon region, rounded out the top five, with Likud commanding over 35 percent in each but other parties maintaining near-national support levels. Rosh HaAyin, home to Benny Gantz, showed the highest support for Religious Zionism at 14.8 percent and also led in backing for Gantz's National Unity at 14 percent—a reflection of the city's relatively large religious population and Gantz's personal residence there.
The comparison to Ohio is instructive. For decades, the American Midwest state voted for the presidential winner in every election from 1964 through 2016, earning its reputation as the ultimate swing state. That streak ended in 2020 when Ohio backed Donald Trump while Joe Biden won the presidency. Ohio has since shifted into the Republican column, and its predictive power has faded. Rehovot faced a similar erosion of its forecasting reputation during the inconclusive elections of the late 2010s and early 2020s, though the 2022 results suggest its bellwether status may be reviving.
At the other end of the spectrum sit cities whose voting patterns diverge sharply from the national picture. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv ranked 28th and 29th on the similarity scale. In Jerusalem, the ultra-Orthodox parties United Torah Judaism and Shas dominated, with Shas receiving 2.5 times as many votes as Yesh Atid. Tel Aviv swung the opposite direction: Yesh Atid nearly doubled Likud's vote share, and Meretz, which failed to clear the national threshold, nearly became the city's third-largest party. Hod Hasharon, where Yesh Atid captured 40.4 percent—the highest share among all cities examined—ranked just below them.
The seven cities classified as "very different" from national patterns are all either ultra-Orthodox or Arab municipalities. In Elad, nearly half of voters backed Shas and 35 percent chose United Torah Judaism. Bnei Brak and Beitar Illit saw 59 percent support for United Torah Judaism and 30 percent for Shas. Modi'in Illit, an ultra-Orthodox city, showed the starkest divergence: 77.4 percent voted for United Torah Judaism compared to just 6 percent nationally. Umm al-Fahm, an Arab city, ranked as the most different of all cities over 50,000 residents, with 40.5 percent backing Hadash-Ta'al, 37.8 percent for Balad, and 17.5 percent for Ra'am, while all Jewish parties combined captured less than 5 percent.
The pattern underlying these rankings is geographical and demographic. The cities that vote most like Israel are medium-to-large, established communities in central Israel and along the coastal plain—neither at the geographic heart of any single political bloc nor in the far periphery. They are neither the wealthiest nor the most disadvantaged. They represent, in essence, middle Israel: the country's socioeconomic and geographic center. These are places where no single sector holds a majority, where Likud voters live alongside supporters of Yesh Atid and the left, where religious and secular populations coexist. By contrast, the cities at the bottom of the ranking have clear sectoral identities: Jerusalem dominated by ultra-Orthodox parties, Tel Aviv and its affluent neighbors by center-left voters, traditional-religious cities by Shas, and mixed Jewish-Arab cities by their own distinct patterns. The bellwether cities are those where the country's full political spectrum appears in rough proportion, making them reliable mirrors of the national will.
Citas Notables
In each of the cities that vote similarly to the actual national results, there is 'a little bit of everything': Likud around the national average, Yesh Atid, Religious Zionism, Shas, Haredim, the left—and no single bloc swallows up the rest.— Tal Kopel, CEO of Madlan
These are medium-to-large, established cities in central Israel and along the coastal plain—not at the heart of one bloc and not in the far periphery. They represent middle Israel, the country's geographic and socioeconomic center.— Tal Kopel, CEO of Madlan
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