The American Zionist Movement certified the votes for this year’s election on Wednesday after the Zionist Supreme Court ruled last week on the remaining irregularities that have been holding up the process. 

With the certification, AZM has also allocated the 155 U.S. delegate seats based on the 224,969 valid votes for the upcoming World Zionist Congress, which will be held next month in Jerusalem. 

Overall, right-wing and religious slates received the plurality of the votes, edging out the centrist and progressive slates, which won the plurality of seats in the 2020 election.

The largest American party in the World Zionist Congress will be the Reform movement, which received 47,648 votes, earning it 33 seats. This represents a slight drop compared to the 2020 election, when the slate received 39 seats.

The Haredi-linked Am Yisrael Chai and Eretz HaKodesh earned 21 and 19 seats, respectively, giving Haredim an unprecedented level of influence in the Zionist movement. Until 2020, no Haredi-affiliated slates served in the World Zionist Congress, owing to the community’s historically ambivalent stance on Zionism. 

The Conservative movement’s Mercaz USA also earned 19 seats, making it the only existing progressive slate to see an increase in voter share. The Orthodox Israel Coalition-Mizrachi won 18 seats. 

The progressive Hatikvah slate earned eight seats, and the right-wing ZOA Coalition won six. Aish Ha’am, an arm of the Aish HaTorah movement that ran for the first time, won five seats. Kol Israel, Vision and the Israeli-American Council, which also ran for the first time, each earned four seats. For Kol Israel and Vision this represents a significant increase from the 2020 election, when they one two and one, respectively.

The America-Israel Democracy Coalition, which is aligned with the Israeli anti-judicial overhaul protest movement, won three seats. The Sephardi Shas party, which had been disqualified for its conduct during the elections regarding fraudulent votes and was later reinstated, will have two seats, as will the pro-West Bank annexation Israel365 Action slate and Beyachad, which represents Jews from the former Soviet Union. The progressive religious Dorshei Torah V’Tzion, the centrist Jewish Future, the liberal A New Union, the American Forum for Israel and the right-wing Herut North America slates all earned one seat. 

The Americans 4 Israel slate did not receive enough votes for a seat, and the Achdut Israel slate, which was found to have both registered initially with false signatures and received more than 2,000 fraudulent votes, was disqualified. 

This year saw a major increase in the number of slates, from 14 in the 2020 election to 22 now. The main effect of this proliferation was a marked drop in the number of delegates for existing right-wing and religious slates. The ZOA Coalition, which had 20% of the votes cast for it deemed fraudulent and disqualified, received 8.3% of the total vote in the 2020 election, while getting 3.7% this time, a 55.7% decrease. The Orthodox Israel Coalition – Mizrachi received 17.6% of the vote in 2020 and 11.6% in this election, a 34% reduction. The Eretz HaKodesh slate also lost nearly 25% of its share of the vote, getting 16.2% in 2020 and 12.2% now.

This year’s election, which was held from March to May, saw the largest turnout in the Zionist movement’s history, with nearly double the number of votes cast than in the 2020 election. 

The 155 American delegates will join some 370 representatives from Israel and around the world to decide how to allocate an annual budget of some $1 billion and run the so-called National Institutions: the World Zionist Organization, Jewish National Fund-Keren Kayemet LeIsrael, Keren Hayesod and Jewish Agency for Israel.

“Based on the final election results that have been certified today, we can say without question that the Zionist movement in the United States is stronger than ever,” Herbert Block, executive director of AZM, said in a statement.. “American Jews’ record-breaking turnout means that the overall U.S. delegation to the 39th World Zionist Congress is positioned to have a greater backing and prominence than ever in advancing a multitude of high-priority Jewish and Zionist causes.”