Netanyahu pick for Jerusalem mayor ousted

TEL AVIV: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pick for Jerusalem mayor has failed to make it past the irst round of polling, local election results showed on Wednesday.

None of the six candidates for mayor, all Jewish, won the 40 per cent of votes required to be elected in the irst round held on Tuesday.

A runoff between the top two will be held on Nov.13.

Minister for Jerusalem Affairs Zeev Elkin, a member of Netanyahu’s rightwing Likud party and who received the premier’s endorsement, won only 20 percent of the vote.

Moshe Leon, another right-winger, garnered the most votes with 33 per cent, according to oficial igures.

Leon has the backing of hawkish Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman and of ultra-orthodox Jewish factions.

The ultra-orthodox, who make up some 10 per cent of Israel’s population, wield particular inluence in Jerusalem, and the city has previously had an ultra-orthodox mayor.

In comparatively liberal Tel Aviv, Labour mayor Ron Huldai was elected to a ifth ive-year term.

In Haifa, also a traditional Labour stronghold, the party’s Einat Kalisch Rotem became the northern port city’s irst woman mayor and irst female to head any of Israel’s three largest cities.

For the irst time in local elections, voting day was declared a national holiday in an effort to boost attendance.

Average turnout nationwide, posted after polls closed on Tuesday, night was 54 per cent, compared to just shy of 51 per cent in 2013. The interior ministry said inal igures would not be released on Wednesday as planned due to a technical glitch in its data systems.

It did not say when the full data would be available.