Officials now counting votes of soldiers, diplomats

With some 97% votes counted, the Central Election Committee has started counting the so-called double envelope ballots, cast by soldiers in their bases and diplomats overseas.

The vast majority of these are the votes of soldiers, which traditionally skew to the right and could change the make up of the next government.

The biggest influence will likely be over two parties hovering around the election threshold.

New Right is currently not making it into the Knesset, polling at 3.14%, but is hoping soldiers’ votes will push it beyond 3.25%.

The Arab Ra’am-Balad party is at 3.45%, but unlikely to garner many of the soldiers votes and could still fall out of the race.

Counting the double envelopes is a slow task with officials having to make sure they did not vote on their bases and again at their homes and is expected to be completed by Wednesday afternoon.