| name | israeli-election-data |
| description | Access Israeli election and political data from the Knesset OData v4 API and the Central Elections Committee (data.gov.il). Use when user asks about Knesset, Israeli elections, MK (Member of Knesset) information, Israeli voting records (per-MK plenum votes via KNS_PlenumVote/KNS_PlenumVoteResult), legislative bills in Israel, Knesset committees, Israeli political parties, coalition data, or election results by locality or ballot. Covers Knesset OData v4 API, Central Elections Committee CSV datasets on data.gov.il, municipal elections, and Israeli political system structure. Do NOT use for non-Israeli elections or political opinion/prediction. |
| license | MIT |
| allowed-tools | Bash(python:*), WebFetch |
| compatibility | Requires network access for Knesset API and data.gov.il. No API keys needed (public data). Data primarily in Hebrew (field names English, values Hebrew). |
Israeli Election Data
Instructions
Step 1: Identify Data Need
| Data Type | Source | Endpoint / Dataset |
|---|
| MK information | Knesset OData v4 | KNS_Person, KNS_PersonToPosition, KNS_MkSiteCode |
| Plenum votes (per-MK detail) | Knesset OData v4 | KNS_PlenumVote, KNS_PlenumVoteResult |
| Bills / legislation | Knesset OData v4 | KNS_Bill, KNS_BillInitiator, KNS_BillName |
| Israeli law corpus (enacted) | Knesset OData v4 | KNS_IsraelLaw, KNS_IsraelLawName, KNS_SecondaryLaw |
| Committee sessions | Knesset OData v4 | KNS_Committee, KNS_CommitteeSession, KNS_CmtSessionItem |
| Plenum sessions | Knesset OData v4 | KNS_PlenumSession, KNS_PlmSessionItem |
| Parliamentary questions (שאילתות) | Knesset OData v4 | KNS_Query |
| Agenda proposals (הצעות לסדר-היום) | Knesset OData v4 | KNS_Agenda |
| Knesset session dates | Knesset OData v4 | KNS_KnessetDates |
| Party information | Knesset OData v4 | KNS_Faction |
| Election results (per locality / per ballot) | data.gov.il (Central Elections Committee) | dataset votes-knesset (CSVs for Knessets 16-25) |
| Party platforms / candidate lists | Central Elections Committee | bechirot.gov.il |
Step 2: Query the Knesset OData v4 API
Base URL: https://knesset.gov.il/OdataV4/ParliamentInfo/
OData v4. The root URL returns the entity list. As of May 2026 the service exposes all KNS_-prefixed entities listed in Step 1 plus the document and lookup tables documented in references/knesset-api-entities.md.
Legacy v3 fallback: the older endpoint at https://knesset.gov.il/Odata/ParliamentInfo.svc/ is still live. Code written against it keeps working, but v4 is the current API and exposes vote tables (KNS_PlenumVote, KNS_PlenumVoteResult) that v3 does not. New work should target v4.
Query pattern (v4):
GET {BASE_URL}/{ENTITY}?$filter={FILTER}&$top={LIMIT}&$select={FIELDS}&$orderby={FIELD}
v4 returns JSON by default; $format=json is no longer required. Include $count=true to get the total record count alongside the page; pair with $top=0 to get a count-only response. For large result sets (any per-MK vote query, multi-Knesset historical pulls), the v4 server returns @odata.nextLink when more pages exist; loop on nextLink until it's absent. Default page size varies by entity, so do not rely on a single $top=N to return everything.
Get all MKs in the 25th Knesset (sworn in 2022-11-15):
GET .../KNS_PersonToPosition?$filter=KnessetNum eq 25 and (PositionID eq 43 or PositionID eq 61)&$top=120
PositionID 43 = male MK (חבר הכנסת), 61 = female MK (חברת הכנסת). PositionID 54 is a separate "faction member" designation, see Gotchas. Full lexicon in references/knesset-api-entities.md.
Search MK by name (Hebrew or English), v4 uses contains, not v3's substringof:
GET .../KNS_Person?$filter=contains(LastName,'נתניהו') or contains(FirstName,'נתניהו')&$top=10
Get factions in a Knesset:
GET .../KNS_Faction?$filter=KnessetNum eq 25
Step 3: Per-MK Plenum Votes (v4)
The two entities to know:
| Entity | Role |
|---|
KNS_PlenumVote | One row per vote: title, time, session, method, status, for/against descriptions, no-confidence flag |
KNS_PlenumVoteResult | One row per MK per vote: MkId, VoteID, ResultDesc ("בעד" / "נגד" / "נמנע"), LastName, FirstName |
Find a vote, then the per-MK results:
- Find the vote by topic:
GET .../KNS_PlenumVote?$filter=contains(VoteTitle,'תקציב')&$orderby=VoteDateTime desc&$top=5
Field is VoteTitle, NOT ItemTitle (which does not exist on this entity, see Gotchas).
- Pull per-MK results for that vote (paginate, do not assume 120 rows):
GET .../KNS_PlenumVoteResult?$filter=VoteID eq {id}&$top=200&$count=true
Absent MKs are not in the response. KNS_PlenumVoteResult only contains MKs who registered a vote (for / against / abstain). A missing MK row does NOT mean "voted no", it means "did not vote / not present". For attendance analysis, compare the returned MkId set against the active-MK list from KNS_PersonToPosition for that Knesset.
- Filter to a specific MK by name (safest path, names are bundled in every result row):
GET .../KNS_PlenumVoteResult?$filter=VoteID eq {id} and contains(LastName,'גפני')
Or by MkId if you already have it from a prior KNS_PlenumVoteResult row:
GET .../KNS_PlenumVoteResult?$filter=VoteID eq {id} and MkId eq {mkId}
MkId is a distinct identifier space from KNS_Person.Id. Treat MkId as opaque, harvest it from KNS_PlenumVoteResult rows themselves (each row also carries FirstName / LastName), rather than assuming KNS_Person.Id equals MkId. If you only have a person from KNS_Person, find their MkId via a name match on a recent KNS_PlenumVoteResult query and cache it for the session.
Field is MkId, NOT PersonID. Read ResultDesc ("בעד" / "נגד" / "נמנע") for the outcome; ResultCode integer values do not follow a simple 1/2/3 mapping (the live value for "בעד" on row 1 is 7), always use ResultDesc.
For aggregate "did the bill pass" status without per-MK detail, query KNS_Bill.StatusID (Step 4).
Historical / archival vote data before public v4 access: the hasadna/knesset-data community ETL at https://github.com/hasadna/knesset-data still mirrors Knesset internal databases to CSV/parquet, useful for academic analysis and bulk back-fills.
Step 4: Track Legislation
Search bills by keyword (v4 contains syntax):
GET .../KNS_Bill?$filter=KnessetNum eq 25 and contains(Name,'דיור')&$orderby=PublicationDate desc&$top=50
Bill status codes (key values):
- 108 = Preparation for first reading
- 118 = Approved in third reading (became law)
- 125 = Rejected
For the full list: KNS_Status?$filter=TypeID eq 5.
Bill initiators, documents, related committee items:
GET .../KNS_BillInitiator?$filter=BillID eq {id}&$expand=KNS_Person($orderby=LastName)
GET .../KNS_DocumentBill?$filter=BillID eq {id}
The BillID column in these related tables points back to KNS_Bill.Id. In v4 the primary key on every KNS_* entity is uniformly named Id; older "BillID / PersonID / CommitteeID" names persist only as foreign-key columns in related tables.
Legislative process stages:
- Bill draft (private member or government bill)
- Preliminary reading (private bills only, plenum vote)
- Committee review (assigned to the relevant committee)
- First reading (plenum vote on bill principles)
- Committee preparation (clause-by-clause review)
- Second reading (clause-by-clause plenum vote)
- Third reading (final vote on the entire bill)
- Publication in Reshumot (official gazette), the bill becomes law
Step 5: Election Results (per Locality / per Ballot)
The Central Elections Committee publishes results on data.gov.il under the dataset votes-knesset:
- Catalog page:
https://data.gov.il/dataset/votes-knesset
- CKAN API:
https://data.gov.il/api/3/action/package_show?id=votes-knesset
Each Knesset election (16th through 25th) has two CSV files:
- By locality (
לפי יישובים), aggregated turnout and vote counts per city/town.
- By ballot box (
לפי קלפיות), raw per-ballot results, granular enough for analysis at individual-station resolution.
Example URL for 25th Knesset by locality:
https://e.data.gov.il/dataset/26f9fa06-fcd7-4173-8df5-65797b63e857/resource/b392b8ee-ba45-4ea0-bfed-f03a1a36e99c/download/-25-.csv
Find the latest resource IDs via the CKAN API call above.
Note on votes.gov.il: older documentation cites votes.gov.il as the results site. That hostname no longer resolves; the canonical site is now https://www.bechirot.gov.il/ (Central Elections Committee, may be in maintenance between election cycles) and the canonical data is on data.gov.il.
Step 6: Electoral System Facts
- Knesset size: 120 seats (unchanged since 1949).
- System: Single national-list proportional representation, no districts.
- Electoral threshold: 3.25% of valid votes since the March 2014 amendment to the Knesset Elections Law (חוק הבחירות לכנסת). Was 2% before that.
- Seat allocation: Modified D'Hondt, named Bader-Ofer in Israel (after MKs Yohanan Bader and Avraham Ofer). Internationally equivalent to the Hagenbach-Bischoff method. Two-phase allocation: (1) integer share of valid votes among parties that crossed the threshold, (2) "leftover seats" via D'Hondt highest-averages.
- Surplus-vote agreements (
heskemei odafim): Two parties may sign a pre-election pact to be treated as one bloc for the leftover-seat round only.
- Election schedule: No fixed cycle. Knesset term is up to 4 years but can be dissolved earlier. The next election (26th Knesset) must be held no later than 27 October 2026 under current legislation.
Step 7: 2022 Election Results (25th Knesset)
Canonical seat counts for the November 1, 2022 election:
| Faction (Hebrew) | Faction (English) | Seats | Bloc |
|---|
| הליכוד | Likud | 32 | Coalition |
| יש עתיד | Yesh Atid | 24 | Opposition |
| הציונות הדתית | Religious Zionism-Otzma Yehudit | 14 | Coalition |
| המחנה הממלכתי | National Unity | 12 | Opposition |
| ש"ס | Shas | 11 | Coalition |
| יהדות התורה | United Torah Judaism (UTJ) | 7 | Coalition |
| ישראל ביתנו | Yisrael Beiteinu | 6 | Opposition |
| רע"מ | Ra'am (United Arab List) | 5 | Opposition |
| חד"ש-תע"ל | Hadash-Ta'al | 5 | Opposition |
| העבודה | Labor | 4 | Opposition |
Total coalition: 64, opposition: 56. Below-threshold parties: Meretz (3.16%) and Balad (2.91%), both received 0 seats. The 25th Knesset was sworn in on November 15, 2022.
Step 8: Municipal Elections
Municipal elections (bechirot reshuyot mekomiyot) are normally held every five years. Most recent cycle:
- 27 February 2024, 242 localities. Runoff round 10 March 2024 in 35 localities where no candidate cleared 40%.
- November 2024, separate round for 11 northern and southern localities that were evacuated due to the Gaza/Lebanon wars and could not vote in February.
- Turnout was a historic low of approximately 49.5%.
Municipal results live on https://www.bechirot.gov.il/local2024/Pages/default.aspx and were eventually mirrored to data.gov.il. Each city publishes its own breakdown via the Ministry of Interior (https://www.gov.il/he/departments/ministry_of_interior).
Step 9: Coalition, Government, and Auxiliary Data
| Topic | Source |
|---|
| Coalition agreements (full text, Hebrew) | https://www.gov.il/he/Departments/policies and PMO publications |
| Government composition (current ministers) | KNS_PersonToPosition filtered to PositionID eq 39 (male) / 57 (female) / 45 (PM) |
| Knesset committee composition | KNS_PersonToPosition filtered to PositionID eq 41 (chair) / 42 (member) |
| Faction membership (separate from MK role) | KNS_PersonToPosition filtered to PositionID eq 54 (see Gotchas) |
| Knesset speaker | PositionID eq 122 (male) / 123 (female) |
| Party financing reports | State Comptroller (mevaker hamedina): https://www.mevaker.gov.il/ |
| Voter eligibility / registration check | Ministry of Interior: https://www.gov.il/he/service/check_voter_registration |
| Population context (per-locality demographics) | Central Bureau of Statistics: https://www.cbs.gov.il/ |
Israeli Political Terminology
| Hebrew | English | Meaning |
|---|
| כנסת | Knesset | Parliament |
| חבר/ת כנסת | MK | Member of Knesset |
| סיעה | Faction | Political party/bloc inside the Knesset |
| מפלגה | Party | Registered political party (separate from סיעה) |
| קואליציה | Coalition | Governing alliance |
| אופוזיציה | Opposition | Non-governing parties |
| הצעת חוק | Bill | Legislative proposal |
| חוק יסוד | Basic Law | Quasi-constitutional law |
| ועדה | Committee | Knesset committee |
| מליאה | Plenum | Full Knesset session |
| הצבעה | Vote | Parliamentary vote |
| אחוז חסימה | Electoral threshold | Minimum vote share for representation (3.25%) |
| הסכם עודפים | Surplus-vote agreement | Pre-election pact between two parties for leftover-seat allocation |
| בדר-עופר | Bader-Ofer | The Israeli D'Hondt seat-allocation formula |
| קלפי | Kalpi | Ballot box / polling station |
| רשומות | Reshumot | Official gazette where laws are published |
| ועדת הבחירות המרכזית | Central Elections Committee | National election authority |
Examples
Example 1: MK Lookup
User says: "Tell me about MK Karine Elharrar."
Actions:
- Search
KNS_Person?$filter=contains(LastName,'אלהרר') to find the person's Id.
- Query
KNS_PersonToPosition?$filter=PersonID eq {id} to enumerate her current and historical roles (MK terms, ministerial positions).
- Use
KNS_Faction to resolve FactionID to faction name per Knesset.
- Present MK profile with party affiliation and ministerial history. For her actual votes on plenum motions, query
KNS_PlenumVoteResult?$filter=MkId eq {id} (see Example 5).
Example 2: Bill Tracking
User says: "What happened to the bill on the haredi draft?"
Actions:
- Search
KNS_Bill?$filter=KnessetNum eq 25 and contains(Name,'גיוס').
- Read each bill's
Id, StatusID, SubTypeID.
- Find sponsors:
KNS_BillInitiator?$filter=BillID eq {id}&$expand=KNS_Person.
- Look up status text via
KNS_Status.
- Pull related committee sessions via
KNS_CmtSessionItem?$filter=ItemID eq {bill.Id}.
- Present bill status, sponsor list, committee assignment, and current reading.
Example 3: Election Analysis by Locality
User says: "Show me the 25th Knesset results for Haifa."
Actions:
- Resolve the latest
votes-knesset per-locality CSV via the CKAN API: GET data.gov.il/api/3/action/package_show?id=votes-knesset, pick the resource named תוצאות האמת של הבחירות לכנסת ה-25 לפי ייישובים.
- Download the CSV (
-25-.csv).
- Filter by locality code or Hebrew name (
חיפה).
- Aggregate by faction column.
- Compare to national results from Step 7.
Example 4: Coalition Composition
User says: "Which factions are in the current coalition?"
Actions:
- Query
KNS_Faction?$filter=KnessetNum eq 25 to list all factions.
- Match against the canonical Step 7 table (Likud, Religious Zionism, Shas, UTJ are coalition).
- Note that coalition composition can shift mid-term, always confirm against current Knesset/Government news.
Example 5: Per-MK Vote Lookup (v4 only)
User says: "Did MK Gafni vote in favor of the budget?"
Actions:
- Find the budget vote:
KNS_PlenumVote?$filter=contains(VoteTitle,'תקציב')&$orderby=VoteDateTime desc&$top=10, pick the relevant Id.
- Filter
KNS_PlenumVoteResult by VoteID + last name (the row already carries FirstName / LastName, no need to resolve through KNS_Person): KNS_PlenumVoteResult?$filter=VoteID eq {voteId} and contains(LastName,'גפני').
- If the result set is empty, that means MK Gafni did not register a vote (absent / abstained-by-absence), NOT "voted no". Report the absence honestly.
- If results exist, read
ResultDesc ("בעד" / "נגד" / "נמנע") and present alongside VoteTitle and VoteDateTime. Note: do NOT derive MkId from KNS_Person.Id, those are different ID spaces; the name match on the result row is the reliable path.
Bundled Resources
Scripts
scripts/query_knesset.py, Query the Knesset OData v4 API. Subcommands: mks (list MKs by Knesset), search-mk (by name), bills (search by keyword), votes (find votes by topic, optionally per-MK results), factions (list factions), entities (list available OData entities), positions (list position-ID lexicon). Run: python scripts/query_knesset.py --help.
References
references/knesset-api-entities.md, Entity reference for the Knesset OData v4 API: field names, OData v4 filter syntax (contains, in, $expand), the full PositionID lexicon (43=MK male, 61=MK female, 45=PM, 39=Minister male, 57=Minister female, 41=Committee Chair, 42=Committee Member, 54=faction member, 122/123=Knesset Speaker, etc.), the per-MK vote entities (KNS_PlenumVote, KNS_PlenumVoteResult), and v3 fallback notes.references/domain-checklist.md, Coverage checklist for a Knesset/elections skill (must-cover, should-cover, out-of-scope) used by the expert-review pipeline.
Recommended MCP Servers
For live Knesset and parliamentary data, pair this skill with:
| MCP Server | What it provides | Install |
|---|
| knesset | MCP interface to the Israeli Knesset OData API: committee data, sessions, bills (private/government/committee), MK information, bill search, and current Knesset number. Prompt templates for analyzing legislation. | Install knesset |
When the knesset MCP is available, use its tools for live legislative data instead of manually constructing OData queries.
Gotchas
- Israeli elections use a single national-list proportional representation system with a 3.25% electoral threshold. There are no districts. Agents may incorrectly describe Israeli elections using US congressional-district terminology.
- Israel has no fixed election schedule. Elections can be called at any time if the Knesset dissolves. Do not assume a 4-year cycle.
- Israeli political party names change frequently due to mergers, splits, and rebranding (Likud-Beytenu, Blue and White, Yamina, National Unity, etc.). Agents may reference party names that no longer exist or conflate different parties across cycles.
- Central Elections Committee results are published in Hebrew. Party letter symbols (
otiyot) are used alongside names and change every election (the letters are assigned by lottery before each cycle).
- v4 is the current API; v3 is legacy. v4 uses
contains(Field,'text') for substring matching; v3 used substringof('text', Field). The v3 endpoint at https://knesset.gov.il/Odata/ParliamentInfo.svc/ is still up but does NOT expose vote tables, prefer v4 for new code.
- Primary key is uniformly
Id in v4. Older "BillID / PersonID / CommitteeID / FactionID" names persist as foreign-key columns in related tables, but the entity's own PK is always Id.
- Per-MK plenum votes ARE in v4 via
KNS_PlenumVote (one row per vote) + KNS_PlenumVoteResult (one row per MK per vote). The old "use hasadna scraper" advice applied to v3 only.
KNS_PlenumVote.VoteTitle, not ItemTitle. ItemTitle does not exist on this entity and returns a 400 error.KNS_PlenumVoteResult.MkId, not PersonID. Use ResultDesc for the outcome ("בעד" / "נגד" / "נמנע"); ResultCode integers do not follow a simple 1/2/3 mapping (the live value for "בעד" on the first row is 7, not 1).KNS_Query stores GovMinistryID (integer), not GovMinistryName. Resolve names via KNS_GovMinistry?$filter=contains(Name,'משפטים')&$select=Id,Name first, then filter KNS_Query by GovMinistryID in (<ids>).- PositionID 54 records faction membership (a separate "חבר/ת סיעה" designation), NOT MK status. To list MKs by faction, filter
KNS_PersonToPosition to PositionID eq 43 or PositionID eq 61 (MK roles) AND FactionID eq {id}, not PositionID eq 54.
KNS_IsraelLawClassificiation is misspelled in the upstream API (double 'i'). Do not "fix" it, the correctly-spelled name returns 404.KNS_PlmSessionItem Ordinal sorting is broken in the public API (known bug). Don't rely on $orderby=Ordinal for plenum-session item ordering.KNS_CommitteeSession StatusID 193 = cancelled. Always filter with StatusID ne 193 unless cancelled sessions are explicitly wanted.- Knesset 0 = Provisional State Council (מועצת המדינה הזמנית, 1948-49). Data quality improves materially from Knesset 17 onward; older records may have gaps.
- Datetime format in v4: ISO 8601, no quotes. Use
VoteDateTime gt 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z, not datetime'2024-01-01' (the v3 form).
votes.gov.il no longer resolves. Use bechirot.gov.il for the live site and data.gov.il/dataset/votes-knesset for the CSVs.
Reference Links
Troubleshooting
Error: "OData query syntax error" / 400 Bad Request
Cause: Mixing v3 and v4 syntax. The most common slip is using substringof('text', Field) against the v4 endpoint, or contains(Field,'text') against the v3 endpoint.
Solution: On v4 (/OdataV4/ParliamentInfo/), use contains(Field,'text'), in (v1,v2), ISO 8601 datetimes without the datetime'...' wrapper, and ISO 8601 dates like 2024-01-01. On v3 (/Odata/ParliamentInfo.svc/), use substringof('text', Field) and datetime'2024-01-01'. Do not mix.
Error: 404 on KNS_VoteMain or KNS_VoteDetail
Cause: Those entity names never existed on the public API. The names look plausible but are internal to the Knesset's legacy systems.
Solution: Use KNS_PlenumVote (the vote header) + KNS_PlenumVoteResult (per-MK rows) in v4. See Step 3.
Error: 404 on KNS_IsraelLawClassification (correct English spelling)
Cause: The entity is intentionally misspelled in the API as KNS_IsraelLawClassificiation (double 'i').
Solution: Use the misspelled name exactly. Do not correct it, both v3 and v4 carry the same typo.
Error: "Field 'ItemTitle' not found" on KNS_PlenumVote
Cause: KNS_PlenumVote uses VoteTitle for the descriptive label.
Solution: Replace ItemTitle with VoteTitle. There is no separate item-title column on this entity.
Error: "Field 'PersonID' not found" on KNS_PlenumVoteResult
Cause: The MK foreign-key on this entity is MkId, not PersonID.
Solution: Use MkId in $filter. Read the MK's name from the row's bundled FirstName/LastName columns instead of joining back to KNS_Person.
Error: ResultCode integers don't match expectation (1/2/3)
Cause: KNS_PlenumVoteResult.ResultCode is not a simple 1=for / 2=against / 3=abstain mapping.
Solution: Use ResultDesc ("בעד" / "נגד" / "נמנע") for the human-readable outcome and treat ResultCode as opaque.
Error: "Field 'GovMinistryName' not found" on KNS_Query
Cause: KNS_Query stores GovMinistryID (integer), no name column.
Solution: Resolve the ID first via KNS_GovMinistry?$filter=contains(Name,'משפטים')&$select=Id,Name, then filter KNS_Query by GovMinistryID in (<ids>).
Error: Listing MKs by faction returns the wrong people
Cause: Filtering KNS_PersonToPosition by PositionID eq 54 returns faction-membership records, which is a separate concept from the MK role itself.
Solution: Filter by PositionID eq 43 or PositionID eq 61 (the MK roles) AND FactionID eq {id} AND FinishDate eq null (currently serving).
Error: "Data returned in Hebrew"
Cause: Knesset data values are primarily in Hebrew.
Solution: Field names are in English (camelCase) but values (MK names, bill titles, party names, position descriptions) are in Hebrew. Use a translation step at the application layer or preserve Hebrew for accuracy.
Error: "votes.gov.il connection refused"
Cause: That hostname is dead.
Solution: Use https://www.bechirot.gov.il/ for the live Central Elections Committee site, or https://data.gov.il/dataset/votes-knesset for the historical CSVs.
Error: "data.gov.il CSV is in legacy Hebrew encoding"
Cause: Older votes-knesset CSVs (Knesset 16-20) may be in Windows-1255 instead of UTF-8.
Solution: Read with encoding='cp1255' in Python, or detect via chardet. Newer files (21+) are UTF-8 with BOM.
