2019 Meretz leadership election

An election was held for the leadership of the Meretz party on 27 June 2019 at the party's conference. Nitzan Horowitz unseated incumbent leader Tamar Zandberg.

2019 Meretz leadership election

← 2018 27 June 2019 2022 →
~1,000 party conference members simple majority of votes needed to win
Candidate Nitzan Horowitz Tamar Zandberg Party Meretz Meretz Popular vote 459 383 Percentage 54.51% 45.49%
Meretz leader before election Tamar Zandberg Meretz leader Nitzan Horowitz

By winning the election, Horowitz became the first openly gay individual to ever lead a party in Israel's Knesset.^[1]

Background

Per the rules of the party, if a second Knesset election is held during the term of the party's chairman, the party conference will choose a forum in which they will then hold another leadership election, as well as primaries to select its party list candidates. The election took place ahead of an upcoming legislative election in September. The conference decided to hold the primary internally, with its members voting on candidates.^[2]

Unlike in the last leadership election the party had held, in 2019, the vote was only open to the roughly 1,000 members of the party conference.^[3]

Results

2019 Meretz leadership election^[1]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%
	Meretz	Nitzan Horowitz	459	54.51
	Meretz	Tamar Zandberg (incumbent)	383	45.49
Total votes			842	100