Labor, led by Amram Mitzna under slogans for "disengagement" from Gaza, won only 19 seats and did not initially join the new government.

As of the fall of 2005, Peres's Labor Party was providing the votes necessary for the Likud-led 30th Government to maintain its majority support in the Knesset.

Sharon said: "As soon as it became clear that the existing political framework was falling apart, I came to the conclusion that the best thing for the country is to hold new elections as soon as possible."

Sharon, as founder of Kadima and incumbent prime minister, was universally expected to lead the new party into the March 2006 election.

In the Shinui primaries, Tel Aviv council member Ron Levintal defeated Avraham Poraz for the number 2 spot.

Despite the decrease in violence during 2005 and 2006, or perhaps because of it, popular support for the security policy remained high among the Israeli public, which continued to fear suicide bombings and Qassam rocket attacks.

In the wake of the disengagement plan, the political field in Israel split into two roughly distinct groups: those who are in favour of withdrawing from most or all of the West Bank (unofficially nicknamed "Blues"), and those who wish for that area to remain under Israeli control (so-called "Orange").

In particular, Ariel Sharon and his faction left Likud to form Kadima because of their support of ending Israeli control over the West Bank.

Labor's social democratic approach, which includes promises to raise the minimum wage and allocate a pension for every worker, now stands in sharp contrast to the neo-liberal agenda promoted by Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu.

Serving as Finance Minister from 2003 to 2005, Netanyahu led a policy that encouraged economic growth and lower taxes at the expense of Israel's long-running welfare mechanism.

In addition to Labor, the orthodox religious Shas, which has always claimed to champion the poor in Israeli society, also attacked Netanyahu's policies during the campaign, as did a number of small (and often new) socialist parties.

Zionist religious parties focused on maintaining the balance between observants and seculars in issues such as education, Kashrut, keeping the Sabbath, and matrimonial law, while Haredi parties demanded funds for religious scholars and the continued exemption of their followers from military service (decided on by David Ben-Gurion in 1951.)

Shinui failed in making significant changes to the status quo on religious issues, and quit the government in 2005 after Sharon decided to transfer funds to the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party.

After official results are published, the President of Israel delegates the task of forming a government to the Member of Knesset with the best chance of assembling a majority coalition (usually the leader of the largest party.)

Note: traditional left-right divisions in Israel are different from in most countries, being mostly based on the different positions with regard to security and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

For example, the left-wing Meretz-Yachad mainly advocates negotiations with the Palestinians along the lines of the Geneva Initiative, while the right-wing National Union is opposed to any territorial concessions, yet both parties have strong histories of tabling social/welfare laws.

2 Dahaf – published in Yedioth Ahronoth (and/or its affiliate site Ynet) with the remark "The votes of the undecided were assigned to parties on the basis of additional questions."

For the second time in Israeli history (previously in 1999), no dominant party sat in the Knesset, only two medium (Kadima and Labor) and small-sized ones.

[2] On 6 April President Katzav formally asked Olmert to form a government officially making him Prime Minister-designate.

The contest was widely viewed as a referendum on Kadima’s plans to disengage from the West Bank, but it also proved to be a vote on economic policies that many believed had harmed the disadvantaged.

Its decline also was due to Netanyahu, whose policies as Finance Minister were blamed for social distress and whose opposition to unilateral disengagement was unpopular with an increasingly pragmatic, non-ideological electorate.