By HERB KEINON

(January 27) -- Since 1977, demographics have worked against Labor and the Left in national elections. Is there any reason to think this time will be different?

Had 14,729 people switched their vote from Binyamin Netanyahu to Shimon Peres in the 1996 elections, Peres would be prime minister today. This is about the number of people who fill Jerusalem's Teddy Stadium for a Betar Jerusalem soccer game on a normal Shabbat afternoon.

Fourteen thousand, seven hundred and twenty nine. Considering that more than 3.1 million votes were cast, this number is infinitesimal - a statistical tie.

Were Ehud Barak a football player, 14,729 is the number that would be pinned on his bathroom mirror, on his car dashboard, on the door to his locker room. This is The Goal, the figure he must constantly set before himself to get fired up.

But not only. This is the number that would have swung the election last time, when Netanyahu won by a 29,457-vote margin. In the meantime, however, demographics have changed, and they do not smile on Labor or the Left.

Netanyahu's support, says Ron Dermer, a pollster and adviser to Natan Sharansky and Yisrael Ba'aliya, is a three-legged stool: the edot hamizrah (Jews of African and Asian origin), the Orthodox and new immigrants from the former Soviet Union. These sectors, along with the Arab sector which is a bastion of support for the Left, are the fastest growing sectors in the country.

An estimated additional 250,000 to 300,000 people will gain the right to vote in the upcoming elections - a number made up of new immigrants and young first-time voters. Not only does Netanyahu hold a wide lead over Barak among Russian-speaking immigrants, but the youth, according to Haifa University political scientist Asher Arian, traditionally vote heavily for the Right. For example, last time Netanyahu outpolled Peres among voters under 21 by a 3:2 ratio.

"The general rule," says Raphael Ventura, who teaches electoral behavior at Tel Aviv University, "is that young voters generally vote along the lines they received from home. Since the groups that vote for the Right have higher birth rates - the religious and Mizrahim - there are more youth in the Right camp.

"My feeling," Ventura continues, "is that demography works in the Right's favor. I don't think this is deterministic, or that Labor should just raise their hands in surrender. This doesn't mean they can't change people's minds, but their starting point is worse."

The Right has enjoyed a demographic "head start" over the Left in every election since 1977. Since that time, says pollster Hanoch Smith, the Right-Left breakdown has been about 55%-45%. And, indeed, the Right has won every election since then, excluding the 1992 elections when Yitzhak Rabin and Labor swept into power.

But even in that election, the parties on the Right outpolled the Left, and lost the government only because so many votes for right-wing parties - such as Tehiya, Moshe Levinger's party, and a party affiliated with former MK Eliezer Mizrahi - failed to make it over the electoral threshold and were "wasted." Had all these votes counted, and all the votes for the Left been tabulated, the Right would have won that fateful election by 17,537 votes.

"Demographically the Right has really been ahead since the '70s, since the coming of age of North African immigrants from the '50s," says Arian, author of a recent book on Israeli politics, The Second Republic: Politics in Israel. "It was a ticking time bomb for Labor and still is," Arian says. The massive influx of CIS immigrants - immigrants who voted for Netanyahu by a 62%-38% margin in 1996 - has made the bomb even more powerful.

"Theoretically," says Ya'acov Katz, pollster and head of Bar-Ilan University's Institute for Community Research, "Netanyahu has better figures to start out with - at least on paper. In reality, however, he can't depend on that, because there are disgruntled Netanyahu voters on the Right. The question is what will they do."

Casual readers of the polls may not understand how Netanyahu has better numbers on paper. Indeed, up until last Friday he was getting clobbered in most polls that reflected two-way races against Barak, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak and even Dan Meridor.

But last Friday's surveys showed a bit of a change. According to a Dahaf poll that appeared in Yediot Aharonot, Barak and Netanyahu were running neck and neck, each garnering 43% support, with another 14% undecided or not planning to vote. A Ma'ariv/Gallup poll the same day had Barak leading Netanyahu by 47% to 46%, with 7 percent undecided.

According to Katz, who is conducting polls for three different parties whose names he would not reveal, it is reasonable to believe that the majority of the voters who have not made up their mind are people who could be labeled traditional right-wing voters. Presently, he says, "the Left is more faithful to Barak than the Right is to Netanyahu. Nobody on the Left will vote for Netanyahu, while there are some on the Right who voted for Netanyahu in the past, but are not sure this time around. Those are the undecided."

According to Arian, who has studied Israeli elections for the last 30 years, two-thirds of those who say they are undecided generally vote the way they did in the previous election. Since it is reasonable to believe that there are more people in the undecided camp who voted for Netanyahu than for Peres in 1996, more of those listed in the undecided camp are likely to vote Netanyahu than Barak.

In other words, Barak has his work cut out for him. Not only is he facing the gap from last time, he is also swimming against an unfavorable demographic tide. Somehow he has to hack away at one of the legs on Netanyahu's three-legged stool; somehow he has to pry away Netanyahu's disgruntled supporters.

According to Smith, the country's religious population stands at about 20% (with another 25% defining themselves as traditional). In the last elections, about 19.5% of the voting public, or 598,638 voters, voted for one of the three religious parties: the National Religious Party, Shas or United Torah Judaism. Granted, not all those who voted for these parties were religious, and not all the religious voted for these parties. However, the numbers are believed to have canceled themselves out.

Of the voters for the religious parties, says Labor MK Shevah Weiss, author of a book dissecting Labor's 1996 defeat called 14,729 Kolot Haserim ("14,729 Missing Votes"), about 95% voted for Netanyahu. "Binyamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister by the religious community," Weiss wrote.

The numbers are truly astounding. According to Weiss, in ballots in neighborhoods where more than 80% of the population is religious, Netanyahu received about 98% of the vote, compared to 2% for Peres. In 82 ballot boxes set up in haredi neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Netanyahu garnered 98.5% of the vote. In all of Bnei Brak, which includes non-religious neighborhoods, he got 81 percent of the vote.

According to Katz - after Barak supported legislating a mandatory draft of yeshiva students and adopted slogans against funds for yeshivot - there is no reason to think that he will fare any better than Peres in the religious sector. Adding to his problem, Katz says, is that he comes saddled with legislators considered by many religious voters as unsympathetic to their community - Yossi Beilin, Uzi Baram, and Avraham Burg, who, although religious, supports a separation of church and state.

There are those in Labor who try to comfort themselves at the nearly complete loss of religious support by saying that it is counterbalanced by massive Arab support. But the numbers are not equal. Although the Arabs supported Peres by about 95% in 1996, they are only 10 percent of the electorate, whereas the religious constitute about 20 percent of the voting public.

Add to this the fact that the religious have a high voter turnout, the highest among the Jewish population, while Arabs traditionally have a lower voter turnout than Jews. In 1996, when overall voter turnout was just over 79 percent, the Arab turnout - which was considered extremely high - lagged behind by about two percentage points. In a close election, these small percentages could make a difference.

Considering the mass of religious voters, there are those who question what seems to be Barak's policy of writing them off, trying instead to win over secular voters who have an anti-religious or anti-haredi predisposition.

Arnon Perlman, a Tel-Aviv based political consultant working on Dan Naveh's Knesset campaign, says Barak obviously feels that he has more to gain from wavering secular voters than from the haredim. He also says that not "sucking up" to the religious voters strengthens Barak's perception among his public and gives him the image of someone decisive with sharply defined positions - something that plays well with the voters.

Indeed, in the 1992 elections it was widely believed that some 50,000 people could not decide whether to vote for Tsomet or Meretz, two parties at polar opposites regarding security/diplomatic issues, but which share a strong stand against religious coercion. Weiss says that he sees Tsomet voters as a potential reservoir that Labor can tap.

But Perlman's partner, Roni Rimon, who is also working on Naveh's campaign, says Barak has made a major mistake in seeming to write off the religious.

"In an election that could be decided by millimeters, it is a mistake to write off an entire sector," he says. "You can't please everyone all the time, and it is correct that 95% of the haredim did vote for Netanyahu last time. But Peres did get 3 to 5%. That is more than 10,000 votes, and it could make a big difference."

Weiss says it is necessary for Labor to change its attitude toward the religious sector. Not by adopting haredi demands, but by relating to them "without arrogance and cynicism, and without creating an anti-religious atmosphere. Beyond the politics, they have big families, and many of them are poor. As socialists, we have a responsibility to look out for them. We have a social and moral obligation to assist them."

Weiss, in his book, writes that by treating the haredim "fairly" and "fulfilling promises in the realms of education and housing, it would have been possible [in 1996] to move part of the haredi public, those that did not fall into the false messianic net of national Zionism and its arrogant security worship, to either support our candidate for prime minister, or to abstain by casting a blank ballot."

It is widely believed that the 1992 elections that brought Rabin into power were determined by the new immigrants who voted heavily for Labor. "In 1992 Labor received more than 60% of the voters from the CIS," Weiss writes. "It is possible that that support is what gave us the victory."

The immigrant vote in 1992, explains Arian, was very much a protest vote against the system - then controlled by the Likud - which the immigrants did not feel was absorbing them as well as it could.

By 1996, the number of voting immigrants had soared from 270,000, to 450,000, and their pattern changed completely. This time, according to Dermer, 62% voted for Netanyahu, 38% for Peres.

This may partly be explained by what are felt to be the reflexive right-wing leanings of many Russians. "When you come from Russia, and the borders extend to where they do, and you are dealing with a hostile world opinion all the time, you couldn't care less what the world says. You do what you think you have to do," Dermer says, explaining the immigrants' political predilection. "There is also no love lost between the Russians and the Arabs," he adds.

The '96 results, Weiss writes, could also be attributed to a lack of serious effort by Labor in this community. And it could be partly attributed to an anti-establishment feeling among immigrants who take out their frustrations on the party in power.

If this is the case, Labor strategists could be hoping, the immigrants can be expected to vote Labor this time.

Not so fast, warns Dermer. "Netanyahu is the classic establishment guy running as the anti-establishment candidate. And it works."

According to a poll Dermer conducted last week among 500 immigrants who have arrived since 1989, 50% said they will vote for Netanyahu, as opposed to only 19% for Barak. And the support for Netanyahu in the "Russian street" is on the rise.

These figures must thrill Netanyahu. But Dermer warns that although the support is wide, it is not necessarily deep. He says that some 5 to 10% of the immigrant voters would change their choice for prime minister if Sharansky endorsed a candidate. In a close race, that could be critical.

It is crucial, says Shevah Weiss, for the Labor Party to enlist a high-profile immigrant to pull in the Russian-language voters. More than a year before the Labor convention gave Barak the authority - under certain conditions - to reserve four places on the party list for significant public figures, Weiss wrote that this was essential to attract sectors that Labor needs in order to win the elections: namely immigrants and Mizrahim.

The need for Mizrahi votes is one of the reasons Barak wants the power to pick a few high-profile candidates on his own. This is the impetus behind his desire for One Israel, a loose union of Labor with other political formations. Labor alone is not going to be able to refurbish its badly tarnished image among North African immigrants overnight, so the only way left now is to bring in some key, high-profile representatives from the sectors the party badly needs.

That is why Barak is so keen on co-opting David Levy and Yitzhak Mordechai to attract Mizrahi voters. He is also dreaming of adding Sharansky.

According to Arian, one reason Labor was successful in 1992 was because it brought in some 100,000 upwardly mobile Mizrahi voters from Likud to Labor - voters it was unable to retain in 1996.

This is a group that Labor was unable to attract in the '70s and '80s, when the general rule was that two-thirds of the country's Mizrahi votes went to Likud. It was the group that Labor had targeted to win back this time, Arian says, and was trying to woo when Ori Orr made his pejorative comments about edot hamizrah in the summer, dealing a huge blow to those efforts.

It is to attract this group that it is now in Barak's interest to distance himself from the party, and to promote One Israel as a brand-new political formation. By the same token, says political consultant Rimon, it is now in Netanyahu's interest to build up the Likud to appeal to the tribal loyalties of wavering followers.

The battle for the small percentage of voters who have not yet made up their mind will be waged largely over the upwardly mobile Mizrahim, those who have a tie to the Likud - albeit a weaker tie than their parents - and who are facing harsh economic strains.

This explains why Barak, in the early weeks of the campaign, is putting so much stress on the economy and social issues. His assumption is that these people will vote according to their pocketbooks, an assumption, Arian points out, that has never once proven true in the past.

Barak's strategy is simple, says political consultant Perlman, "Bibi [Netanyahu] can talk about peace and security, I [Barak] will talk about education, health, economics, social issues, unemployment. Look what Barak's speeches are about: the elderly woman in the hospital without treatment, the kid with an unemployed father.

"He is aiming for the mainstream who voted Netanyahu last time, not for the voter in Dimona or Ofakim. Past history has shown they will vote Likud no matter what. Barak is aiming for those who have less money than they did four years ago, are not doing as well as they did four years ago, and don't feel economically secure about tomorrow. These are the middle classes in Rishon Lezion, Holon, Bat Yam, Ness Ziona, Ramle, Lod. Everyone else votes tribally, these people can go either way."

Barak's message to these people is simple. Things today are bad, real bad. No health, no education, no welfare.

Netanyahu's counter strategy, according to Perlman, is to set a completely different agenda, a security agenda. "He is saying something simple: 'if you don't vote for me, things won't be bad, they just won't be. The Palestinians will kill you.' It's a simple message, and it has power."

The two candidates are speaking on two different planes, Perlman maintains. He says that Barak will want to stay away from security issues, because people do feel more secure than they did four years ago, and that Netanyahu will want to stay away from health, education and welfare issues, because in that sphere unemployment is up, and people are paying more for health care and getting less. As acting finance minister, however, Netanyahu can do much - and has shown he is willing to do a lot by way of "election economics" - to make people feel existentially better.

The battle is over the agenda. Barak wants people to believe they are miserable now, while Netanyahu wants them to believe they will be miserable in the future if he is not around. Misery is this year's campaign theme. Quite a choice.

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The power game
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'I don't pay attention to polls'
Population shifts