From the Liveblog of
Monday, July 8, 2024
French lawmaker Meyer Habib narrowly loses reelection bid amid low voter turnout in Israel
Canaan Lidor is a former Jewish World reporter at The Times of Israel
Meyer Habib, a hawkish French-Jewish lawmaker who represents in the French parliament a constituency where most registered voters live in Israel, narrowly loses his reelection bid to Caroline Yadan, a centrist who is also Jewish and belongs to President Emmanuel Macron’s party.
Low turnout in Israel appears to have scuttled Habibi’s reelection after 11 years in the National Assembly, the lower house of France’s parliament.
Yadan, a longtime campaigner against antisemitism, beats Habib by approximately two percentage points in the constituency, which is the 8th constituency of French citizens abroad. It includes French citizens from Turkey, Greece, Italy, Malta, Cyprus, the Vatican and San Marino in addition to Israel, where 61 percent of the constituency’s 148,948 registered voters live.
Out of the 34,730 ballots cast, only 46% came from Israel, where turnout was lower than in some of the other countries belonging to the constituency.
Israel’s three ballot boxes in Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv saw a turnout of 10%, 22% and 17% respectively. By contrast, Greece had turnouts of 32%-33% in Thessaloniki and Athens, Cyprus had 33%, Italy had 33%-39% and Istanbul in Turkey boasted 34%. The total turnout for the entire constituency was 24%.
Habib, who is a personal friend of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and an outspoken advocate of Israel in France, obtains about 85% of the 16,039 votes cast in Israel in the second and final round yesterday of the French parliamentary elections, official results show.
A member of the small, center-right Union of Democrats and Independents party, Habib fails to win a single ballot box outside Israel. His best score abroad is in Malta, with 32%. His stint in parliament is expected to end today, when the newly elected lawmakers assume their elected offices.
The Times of Israel Community.