List PR Threshold

A list PR threshold is a minimum share of the vote (or sometimes a minimum number of seats won in districts) that a party must clear before it qualifies for any proportional seats. Below the threshold, a party's votes are discarded and redistributed among parties that did clear it, typically via the same seat-allocation formula (D'Hondt, Sainte-Laguë, largest remainder, etc.) used for the rest of the count.

Thresholds exist to balance two competing goals of proportional representation: faithfully reflecting voter preferences, and producing a parliament workable enough to form a government. Without one, very small parties can win seats and complicate coalition-building; with one set too high, large blocs of voters end up unrepresented.

Common examples include:

• Germany: 5% of the national second vote, or three directly won constituency seats (the Grundmandatsklausel), to share in Bundestag list seats.
• Turkey: long set at 10%, lowered to 7% by a 2022 law ahead of the 2023 elections.
• Poland: 5% for parties and 8% for coalitions in Sejm elections.
• Israel: 3.25% of the national vote for the Knesset, raised from 2% in 2014.
• Netherlands: no formal legal threshold beyond the natural one created by 150 seats (~0.67%).

Thresholds can be legal (statutory, like the examples above) or natural (effective floors created by district magnitude and the allocation formula). They can apply nationally, regionally, or per district. Some systems include alternative qualification routes, such as Germany's constituency-seat exception, which historically allowed the PDS and Die Linke to enter the Bundestag despite falling short of 5%.

The European Court of Human Rights, in Yumak and Sadak v. Turkey (2008), upheld Turkey's then-10% threshold but called it exceptionally high and urged moderation. Constitutional courts in Germany have struck down thresholds in European Parliament elections (2011, 2014) as disproportionate at that level.