Electoral Thresholds
How minimum vote requirements shape which parties win seats, and the debate over setting them higher or lower.
Keeping Small Parties Out
An electoral threshold is the minimum share of votes a party must win to be eligible for seats. Thresholds exist in most proportional systems and range from 0.67 percent (the Netherlands) to 10 percent (Turkey, until 2022 when it was lowered to 7 percent). The most common threshold is 5 percent, used in Germany, Poland, New Zealand, and many other countries.
The rationale is governability: without thresholds, PR systems can produce extreme fragmentation, with dozens of tiny parties winning one or two seats each, making stable coalition formation nearly impossible. Israel, with a threshold of just 3.25 percent, regularly has 10-13 parties in the Knesset. The Weimar Republic, with no effective threshold, had up to 17 parties in the Reichstag, contributing (some argue) to the instability that facilitated the Nazi rise to power.
