Israel legislative election, 2006

Elections for the 17th Knesset

← 2003 28 March 2006 2009 →

Party Leader % Seats ± Kadima Ehud Olmert 22.02% 29 New Labor Amir Peretz 15.06% 19 0 Shas Eli Yishai 9.53% 12 +1 Likud Benjamin Netanyahu 8.99% 12 -26 Yisrael Beiteinu Avigdor Lieberman 8.99% 11 National Union Benny Elon 7.14% 9 +2 Gil Rafi Eitan 5.92% 7 New United Torah Judaism Yaakov Litzman 4.69% 6 +1 Meretz Yossi Beilin 3.77% 5 -1 United Arab List Ibrahim Sarsur 3.02% 4 +2 Hadash Mohammad Barakeh 2.74% 3 0 Balad Azmi Bishara 2.30% 3 0 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.

Prime Minister before Prime Minister after Ehud Olmert Kadima Ehud Olmert Kadima

Elections for the 17th Knesset were held in Israel on 28 March 2006. The voting resulted in a plurality of seats for the then-new Kadima party, followed by the Labor Party, and a major loss for the Likud party.

After the election, the government was formed by the Kadima, Labor, Shas, and Gil parties, with the Yisrael Beiteinu party joining the government later. The Prime Minister was Ehud Olmert, leader of Kadima, who had been the acting prime minister going into the election.

According to the Congressional Research Service:

The March 28, 2006, Knesset election results were surprising in many respects. The voter turnout of 63.2% was the lowest ever. The contest was widely viewed as a referendum on Kadima’s plans to disengage from the West Bank, but it also proved to be a vote on economic policies that many believed had harmed the disadvantaged. Kadima came in first, but by a smaller margin than polls had predicted. Labor, emphasizing socioeconomic issues, came in a respectable second. Likud lost 75% of its votes from 2003 because Kadima drained off supporters. Its decline also was due to Netanyahu, whose policies as Finance Minister were blamed for social distress and whose opposition to unilateral disengagement was unpopular with an increasingly pragmatic, non-ideological electorate.

In the 2003 elections, Likud, under the leadership of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, had a convincing win by Israeli standards, winning 38 seats in the 120-member Knesset (parliament), with Sharon perceived as tough anti-terrorist leader on the wings of his 2002 Operation Defensive Shield. Labor, led by Amram Mitzna under slogans for "disengagement" from Gaza, won only 19 seats and did not initially join the new government.