Over 90 percent of first-time voters intend to cast ballots in the election later this year, a poll published on Sunday found, indicating the importance of the vote to Israel’s young adult demographic.

The survey was conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute’s Education Policy for Democracy program with 576 respondents between the ages of 18 and 22, meaning that the upcoming election will be the first time they are old enough to vote.

Sixty-three percent of respondents told IDI that they definitely intend to vote in the election, which must be held no later than October 27, while an additional 28% said they think they will vote. Just four percent of respondents said they had made up their minds to not vote.

The results did not change significantly when separated into Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis, with 63% of Jewish respondents and 62% of Arab respondents answering that they would definitely be voting. An additional 29% of Jewish Israelis and 25% of Arab Israelis said they thought they would vote.

The poll also examined voter breakdown by religious affiliation, dividing respondents into categories of secular, traditional nonreligious, traditional religious, religious, or ultra-Orthodox. Across all categories, between 80% and 95% of people said they would definitely vote or were thinking of voting.

Driving the high motivation to vote was the belief in the ability of the election to shape life in Israel going forward, as 82% of participants responded that voting could influence reality “to a fairly great extent” or “to a very great extent.”

Just 15% of........

© The Times of Israel