National party strategies in local elections: a theory and some evidence from the Israeli case

Israeli national parties show a high variance in their tendency to compete in local elections for local authorities’ mayoral position and council seats. Indeed national parties can use local electoral competition to garner support for national elections. However, national parties might be also exposed to local losses and commitments which will hurt their performance in national elections. The results of Israeli ballot-box data from the 2006 national and the 2008 local elections show that Israeli national parties’ decision whether to compete in local elections is affected by the local support patterns in national elections, parties’ valence and the locality’s peripherality.