In #Israel, @yairlapid and @naftalibennett are trying now to form a cabinet, with Bennett the first PM in a rotation between the two. One problem (among others) - Bennett& #39;s party commands only 6% of the parliament. Critics say he will lose even that next election. Will he? https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🧵" title="Thread" aria-label="Emoji: Thread">

I looked at http://Parlgov.org"> http://Parlgov.org  data of 474 PM-parties in 29 countries over 70 years (1945-2015) and how they faired in the next elections. Not good (but unsurprisingly), they lose votes. Governing has its costs. But most PM parties are much larger than Bennett& #39;s 2/n

To figure out how change in vote share depends on vote share, I ran a regression with the former as DV, and the latter as well as its square value to allow for non-linearity. Turns out most parties lose votes, but not the really small ones - below 10%. Lucky for Bennett! 3/n

But wait! what about ideology? Bennett& #39;s party is also far from the centre, isn& #39;t that precarious? Well, yes it is. If we add interaction with extremity, we see it is the central small PM-parties that gain votes, while small extreme parties lose votes. 4/n

So should Bennett risk it and be PM? I say yes. First, if you follow Israeli politics you know this is better than the alternative (if you don& #39;t, trust me). Also, you don& #39;t get many chances to become PM. And political narratives - like history - are written by the winner. 5/5