In party-list proportional representation systems, an election threshold is a clause that stipulates that a party must receive a minimum percentage of votes, either nationally or within a particular district, to get any seats in the parliament. The effect of the threshold is to eliminate small parties, or force them into coalitions. Many people hold that this makes an election system more stable by keeping out radical factions.

In Poland's Sejm and Germany's Bundestag (elected through the Additional member system), this threshold is 5% (or 3 constituency seats in Bundestag, but directly won constituencies are kept regardlessly), while it's 1.5% in Israel's Knesset (it was 1% before 1992), and 10% in the Turkish parliament. The 10% threshold in Turkey is designed mainly to prevent multi-party coalitions where disproportionate power is held by small parties, but it also effectively prevents Kurdish parties from entering the Parliament (Kurds are estimated to be a 20% minority in Turkey but only about 7% votes along ethnic lines). In Poland the minorities do not have to reach the threshold level to get into the parliament, and so there are 2 MP from German Minority in the Sejm.

Countries can have more than one threshold. For example, Germany, as mentioned earlier, has a "regular" threshold of 5%, but if 3 constituency seats are won in the Bundestag, the party can get additional representation with less than 5% of the vote. Most multiple-thresholds are still in the proposal stage. For example, in Canada, one proposal to reform the electoral system would see a 5% national threshold, 1% of the vote and 1 seat in the house of commons, or 2% nationally and 15% of the vote in any one province.

See also

• List of democracy and elections-related topics