 Why are we headed to elections again in Israel? If you're confused, we don't blame you. The parliamentary system in Israel can be really confusing. So here is how elections work. To start off, Israelis don't vote directly for the prime minister. Instead, they cast their ballots for a political party. Now in this election, we have 39 political parties in the running, which shows you just how diverse Israeli democracy is. But here's the deal. Only parties that pass the voter threshold make it into the Knesset, otherwise known as Israel's parliament. That means that unless a party gets at least 3.25% of the total vote, they're out. Now, as for the parties that do make it past that threshold, the percentage of the vote that they get determines how big their party is. There are 120 seats in the parliament, and the vote determines how many seats each party gets. The more votes a party gets, the more seats it's going to get into Knesset. It's directly proportional. And they're all buying to get as many seats as possible. Because to form a governing coalition, you need to have at least 61 seats. That is the majority out of 120. But as you might guess, because there are so many parties in the running, there's never one party that actually gets enough seats alone to form its own government, which means that once the votes are in and each party finds out how many seats it's won, they all need to figure out how to band together to form one coalition with at least 61 seats. And there is a lot of negotiating that has to take place to make that happen. But it's not a free-for-all. One person is tapped to lead this negotiating. Once all the votes are tallied, the president of Israel chooses one Knesset member from the parties that actually made it in. The president's gonna choose this person based on the likelihood that he or she can form a government with at least 61 seats. Because like we said, that's the majority. Now, usually this person is also the leader of the party which received the most seats, but not always. Now, as you might imagine, building a coalition government takes time because of all the negotiating that needs to happen. In fact, the process can take weeks after the election concludes. And that's why the individual selected to build the coalition has up to 42 days to negotiate with the different parties and then present his or her government to the Knesset for a vote of confidence. If the Knesset approves this proposed government, then you're looking at Israel's new prime minister and government coalition. Now, once the coalition is approved, it can begin its four-year term in power. But most governments haven't actually served a full term because their coalitions often prove unstable. That's what happened here in Israel over the last four years. We've seen four governments fall because they haven't been stable enough. So will this election make the difference or are we headed back to the polls sooner than we think?