While folks in D.C. are preparing articles of impeachment, there is election news regarding two of Trumps favorite elected politicians — Bibi Netanyahu and Boris Johnson.

Bibi, like Trump, has been facing investigation for criminal misconduct.  And because Israel permits charges to be filed against a prime minister, he is now actually facing charges.  Meanwhile, Israeli politics are a royal mess.  When there are two or three really strong parties that get most of the votes, proportional representation (or similar systems like the mixed-member system in Germany) can work.  The small parties get to get minor concessions from the major parties, but one of the major parties is typically in a strong enough position to turn to other coalition partners if a potential ally asks for too much.  In Israel, the main parties are simply not strong enough.  Netanyahu’s Likud is only getting around 25% of the vote, leaving them well short of a majority in the Knesset (Israel’s parliament).  And the Labour Party has essentially collapsed leaving centrist politicians to emerge one after the other as the alternative to Likud in new parties that bubble up and then collapse from cycle to cycle.  This past year, that alternative has been the “Blue and White” Party.  But the Blue and White Party has also only gotten around 25% of the vote.  And the remaining parties are too fractured to get enough of them together.  The remaining 50% of the vote is almost split evenly between the religious parties (who want special favors for the ultra-Orthodox), the remnants of Labour and its allies (who want some generally progressive secular government), the right-of-center secular nationalists (who want to repeal the existing special rights of the ultra-Orthodox), and the Arab parties.  This roughly even split means that the natural allies of Likud and Blue and White stood at around 50-52 seats each after the last election.  The secular nationalists could theoretically put either side over the top, but they refuse to sit in a coalition with either the religious parties or the Arab parties (essentially requiring a national unity government as a condition for joining a coalition).

In the April 2019 elections, Likud and Blue and White won 35 seats each (out of 120).  The religious parties combined for 21 seats, leaving a potential Likud-led coalition at 56 seats.  On the other hand, Labour and other progressive parties won a total of 14 seats, leaving a potential Blue and White coalition at 49 seats.  The remaining 15 seats were split between the Arab parties (10 seats) and the secular nationalists (5 seats), meaning that the only way to get to 61 outside of a national unity government would be for the secular nationalist to enter a coalition that either expressly included the religious parties (and the two groups had conflicting demands) or had the implicit support of the Arab parties.  Since neither alternative was acceptable, no government could be formed and we had a second round of elections in September.

In the September 2019 elections, both major parties lost seats.  Blue and White declined to 33 seats, and Likud fell to 32 (giving even more power to the smaller parties).  The religious parties gained 23 seats meaning that the potential Likud-religious party coalition only lost one seat to 55 seats.  On the other hand, the progressive parties only won 11 seats, knocking the potential Blue and White-led coalition down to 44 seats.  The remaining 21 seats were split 13 seats to the Arab parties and 8 to the secular nationalists.  In short, while the exact numbers changed, the secular nationalists stayed as the party at the balance of power.

So the only potential workable coalition after both of the last two elections was a national unity government.  And Netanyahu is the obstacle to any national unity government.  Blue and White insists that Netanyahu has to go.  Likud insists that Netanyahu has to be prime minister (despite the corruption allegations).  With no obvious solution until Likud decides to change leadership, Israel is now looking at a March election.  And while, there are some in Likud who plan to challenge Netanyahu for the leadership, Netanyahu’s position within Likud is similar to Trump’s position among Republicans.  So, barring the miracle of Likud dumping Netanyahu, it will be up to Israel voter’s to break the deadlock but the deadlock accurately reflects the current partisan divides and it will be up to the swing voters to make the difference.

Boris Johnson’s day of reckoning is more immediate.  He is facing a “snap” general election in hours.   (A snap election is any election called significantly in advance the expiration of the term of parliament.  The Fixed Term Act was supposed to make snap elections rare, but the UK has now had two snap elections since the May 2015 elections for a parliament that was supposed to last until May 2020.)  The current election is looking very similar to the last snap election in 2017.  In both elections, the initial polling numbers favored the Conservatives but as things got closer to the election (and a Labour majority looked almost impossible), voters have begun to move toward Labour to prevent a Conservative majority.  As with 2017, the last polling numbers indicate a narrow Conservative majority (slightly larger than the majority after 2015), but the 2017 election ended with a Conservative minority government that depended on the Democratic Unionist Party (one of the local parties from Northern Ireland).  The current proposed agreement on Brexit (which the Conservatives propose to ratify if they win) is anathema to the Democratic Unionists; so the Conservatives can’t depend on the continued support from the Democratic Unionists if necessary in the next parliament.

There are three big questions for the outcome of the election.  The first question is tactical voting.  Like the United States, the U.K. parliament is composed of single-member districts with members elected on a first-past-the-post basis.  Unlike the U.S., the U.K. actually has three significant third parties (as well as regional parties in each of the smaller nations).  Because only the top candidate wins, individuals who would actually prefer the candidate who is most likely to finish third always have to choose between voting for that individual or casting a vote for one of the top two candidate in an effort to keep the party of the other candidate from winning the majority nationally.  Some of the parties have actually formed a loose alliance in which they declined to run in seats in which the other parties had a better chance to maximize the total combined seats for all of the parties.

The second issue is the impact of young voters.  Like in the U.S., a big generational divide has emerged.  and, like in the U.S., typically, young voters are less likely to vote.  But in recent months as an early election seemed probable, a large number of new young voters registered.  Since most polls use a model based on likely voters (even if they include all responses from all voters), if young people vote in a higher proportion than normal — which we will not know until the results are in — the polls may be weighted too much toward older voters (and thus the Conservatives).

The third issue is Brexit.  Like in the U.S., many traditional progressive (in the U.K., Labour) constituencies are in areas that have had declining manufacturing.  And the economic nationalism of Boris Johnson (and other pro-Brexit parties) is appealing in these areas.  Many of these constituencies voted to leave the European Union.  The question is whether Brexit is strong enough to flip these seats from Labour to the Conservatives.  On the other hand, many suburban districts voter “remain” in the 2016 Brexit referendum.  Is the fear of the economic disaster that will befall if the U.K. leaves the European Union enough to flip these moderate upper middle class seats to Labour or the Liberal Democrats from the Conservatives.  This redefining of the base of the two major parties may be the most significant unknown in this year’s election.

A lesser feature of the election is that an unusually significant number of seats for senior members of all parties are marginal seats.   Unlike the U.S., there is less of a stigma to carpet bagging and no actual residency requirement (e.g., you do not have to reside in Scotland to run for one of the seats in Scotland whereas, in the U.S., you have to at least live in the state that you are representing),  As such, it is not unusual to steer a member seen as an “up and comer” from a marginal seat to a safe seat.  However, as noted above, the drastically changing politics of the U.K. may be redefining which seats are safe and which are marginal (or swing to use the U.S. term).

The bottom line is that, in slightly over 24 hours, we will have an idea whether the voters in the U.K. have given Boris Johnson the green light to pass his version of the withdrawal agreement to permit the start of the negotiation of the “greatest trade agreement ever” between the U.K. and the European Union or will the vote indicate a desire to go back to the drawing board and start over in an effort to replace the piece of *%! that is the current withdrawal agreement that Johnson managed to get out of last second desperation.

In both cases, the election results in these two countries will be further indication of whether Trumpian politics are able to succeed in other countries.