Feiglin's failure

Moshe Feiglin is the head of Manhigut Yehudit, which is a faction within the Likud party.

Moshe Feiglin pulled in an impressive 23% or so of the vote for leadership of the Likud. His percentage has gone up each in primary he has participated in. Last time he pulled down about 13% and this time he is up to 23%. Feiglin knows the road is a long one and he will not overturn the Likud in just a few years. As long as he keeps improving his support base, eventually he will reach the point where he will be victorius.

Feiglin's acheivment of 23% of the vote equals about 9000 votes. Some people, especially the hard core Feiglin supporters, are declaring this to be a serious achievement and even a victory of sorts.

This is how I see it. I am not someone who can crunch numbers like an accountant, but this is what I think. Manhigut Yehudit claims to have 9000 members, the overwhelming majority of which it brought into the Likud from outside.

The 23% he achieved is equal to about 9000 votes.

Clearly not everyone who is a member of Manhigut voted for Feiglin. Sure, MY voters are very disciplined and come out to vote in high numbers. I did not see any, official or unofficial, numbers posted as to internal Manhigut numbers, but I think we can safely assume that they had a turnout much greater than the general Likud turnout of 40%. Sure some people are abroad, some could not vote for personal reasons, etc. so not all 9000 members actually voted.

I will be generous and assume 80% of Manhigut members turned out and voted Feiglin. That is very generous. Also, there are plenty of people even in the Likud, who just do not like Bibi Netanyahu and would not vote for him no matter what. These might be supporters of Silvan Shalom or just general Likudniks who do not like Bibi. Those people probably voted Feiglin, even if just as a protest vote against Bibi.

Alll this means that sure Feiglin pulled in 23%, which in percentages alone is a great achievement. However, I think the percentage is so high just because the general turnout was so low. Feiglin really only pulled in his own members plus a few more.

This election shows that Feiglin's time has not yet come. He is not being successful at pulling in support from the general public. Here and there he might find a sympathetic person or someone who supports him, but overall he is not getting any support from outside his own people.

Unless he finds a way to change that, he will never be successful in his goals.

It might simply be PR. He is painted as an extremist. He is not necessarily clear enough when he talks about teaching Jewish values and tradition rather than establishing a "Halachic state" (people have told me they heard him say many times his goal is to teach Jewish values, tradition, culture, history, etc. but not create a halachic state, yet they do not understand how he differentiates). He might just need to find a better way of getting out his message.

I know Feiglin goes to lots of meetings. As a matter of fact he has said he will never turn down a community meeting in which he is asked to speak and present his views. As far as I can tell, when he goes to these meetings, he is likely "preaching to the choir". It is a crowd made up mostly of his supporters, who want a chance to meet him and ask questions.

So sure he goes out to meet the people, but maybe he is only meeting his own people in different settings. Maybe he is not really meeting the general public.

Feiglin has succeeded in one thing. That is, he has brought the issues of Jewish values and education to the forefront of the discussion. He gets interviewed in mainstream media and writes articles in newspapers and these issues he raises get discussed. But that is not enough. If he really has the goal of winning this thing eventually, he has to look for more general support, and not just the people he brings in from the outside from other fringe parties.

As of right now, Moshe Feiglin, in my opinion, is not even close to achieving his goals. He is not even on the right path. This primaries was the outing of Moshe Feiglin's failure.