Merry Christmas to all the Christians who have better things to do than look at this! The
map is DONE.
Next step is some light coding to colour it in automatically. Anyone here tried that?
Here's the Negev:
As always, Likudnik development towns (Shas manages second in Dimona, Netivot, and Yemen Field (Ofakim + Neve Menahem in Beer Sheva).
Arad in the Dead sea seat voted for Blue-White and Beitenu over Likud, explained by a backlash against the Hassidic community that's settled there recently, but it's too small to dominate the seat.
I'm not entirely sure I've mapped the Bedouin seats correctly, the electoral commision reports some of the results from tribes and it's really unclear where they fit on the map. It wouldn't make a difference to the results, the Bedouin vote is pretty homogenous (low turnout, >95% Joint List) but it bugs me.
These results show that Jewish villages in the Negev are much more centrist than in the centre of the country. There are religious villages especially around Netivot and towards the West Bank but that's not all the difference.
Fairly interesting dynamics in the Arava (far south). Because it's so sparsely populated, I drew the seat to include some isolated urban areas - Mitzpe Ramon, part of Yeruham, the northern third of Eilat. Rural areas (Kibbutzes mostly) are only 28% of the seat's population, but turnout in Eilat is so low that they make up nearly 40% of votes. Kibbutzes in the Arava consider themselves the heart of the environmentalist movement, hence they vote left, hence the Gantz bloc pulls out a victory but Blue-White alone doesn't. Here's a bonus map of turnout in Eilat: