This Sunday will be the 27th anniversary of the last time Israel’s center-left won a Knesset election. On June 23, 1992, Labor and Meretz won a combined 56 seats in the new Knesset and, together with the five seats of Arab parties, had 61 seats, blocking incumbent Likud Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir from forming a new governing coalition.

It was a high point for both parties – Labor on 44 seats and Meretz  – one never to be reached again in the next eight elections. Then-Labor leader Ehud Barak would win in 1999, but only thanks to the short-lived experiment of holding direct elections for prime minister. In the accompanying Knesset election, Barak’s Labor only won 26 seats and Meretz slipped to 10.

The decline in both parties’ electoral fortunes has never been reversed. On April 9 this year, Labor recorded its worst-ever result, claiming only six seats. Meretz’s four seats was the worst it had ever done, except for 2009 when it won only three seats. Comparing the two elections, Labor and Meretz lost over 80 percent of the seats they had won in 1992.

Read the full article at Haaretz.