Editing Electoral threshold (section)

===Number of wasted votes===
{{Main|Wasted vote#History of wasted votes in proportional representation}}
Electoral thresholds can sometimes seriously affect the relationship between the percentages of the popular vote achieved by each party and the distribution of seats. The proportionality between seat share and popular vote can be measured by the [[Gallagher index]] while the number of [[wasted vote]]s is a measure of the total number of voters not represented by any party sitting in the legislature.

The failure of one party to reach the threshold not only deprives their candidates of office and their voters of representation; it also changes the [[power index (disambiguation)|power index]] in the assembly, which may have dramatic implications for coalition-building.

The number of wasted votes changes from one election to another, here shown for New Zealand.<ref name="results">{{cite web |url= https://electionresults.govt.nz/electionresults_2020/statistics/index.html |title= 2020 GENERAL ELECTION – OFFICIAL RESULTS AND STATISTICS |website= ElectionResults.govt.nz |publisher= [[Electoral Commission (New Zealand)|Electoral Commission]] |date= 30 November 2020}}</ref> The wasted vote changes depending on voter behavior and size of effective electoral threshold,<ref>{{cite journal | doi=10.1017/gov.2021.17 | title=The Choice of Electoral Systems in Electoral Autocracies | year=2023 | last1=Chang | first1=Eric C.C. | last2=Higashijima | first2=Masaaki | journal=Government and Opposition | volume=58 | pages=106–128 | s2cid=235667437 | doi-access=free }}</ref> for example in [[2005 New Zealand general election]] every party above 1 percent received seats due to the electoral threshold in New Zealand of at least one seat in first-past-the-post voting, which caused a much lower wasted vote compared to the other years.
<!--{{Graph:Chart|width=400|height=160|type=rect|xAxisTitle=Year of New Zealand general election |yAxisTitle=wasted vote in %|yAxisMin=0|yAxisMax=10
|x=1996, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2011, 2014, 2017, 2020
|y1Title=wasted vote|y1=7.54,6.03,4.89, 1.5, 6.46, 3.31, 6.1, 4.62, 7.71
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In the [[1995 Russian legislative election|Russian parliamentary elections in 1995]], with a threshold excluding parties under 5 percent, more than 45 percent of votes went to parties that failed to reach the threshold. In 1998, the Russian Constitutional Court found the threshold legal, taking into account limits in its use.<ref>[http://www.law.edu.ru/judicial/judicial.asp?judicialID=1161582&subID=100050463,100050486,100050488 Постановление Конституционного Суда РФ от 17 ноября 1998 г. № 26-П – см. пкт. 8]{{in lang|ru}} {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080421084628/http://www.law.edu.ru/judicial/judicial.asp?judicialID=1161582&subID=100050463,100050486,100050488 |date=21 April 2008 }}</ref>

After the first implementation of the threshold in Poland in [[1993 Polish parliamentary election|1993]] 34.4 percent of the popular vote did not gain representation.

There had been a similar situation in [[Turkey]], which had a 10 percent threshold, easily higher than in any other country.<ref name=cTokerBaraj>{{cite web |last=Toker |first=Cem |title=Why Is Turkey Bogged Down? |url=http://www.turkishpolicy.com/images/stories/2008-01-turkey/CemToker.pdf |work=Turkish Policy Quarterly |publisher=Turkish Policy |access-date=27 June 2013 |year=2008}}</ref> The justification for such a high threshold was to prevent multi-party coalitions and put a stop to the endless fragmentation of political parties seen in the 1960s and 1970s. However, coalitions ruled between 1991 and 2002, but mainstream parties continued to be fragmented and in the [[2002 Turkish general election|2002 elections]] as many as 45 percent of votes were cast for parties which failed to reach the threshold and were thus unrepresented in the parliament.<ref>In 2004 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe declared this threshold to be manifestly excessive and invited Turkey to lower it (''Council of Europe Resolution 1380 (2004)''). On 30 January 2007 the European Court of Human Rights ruled by five votes to two (and on 8 July 2008, its Grand Chamber by 13 votes to four) that the 10 percent threshold imposed in Turkey does not violate the right to free elections, guaranteed by the European Convention of Human Rights. It held, however, that this same threshold could violate the Convention if imposed in a different country. It was justified in the case of Turkey in order to stabilize the volatile political situation which has obtained in that country over recent decades. The case is ''[[Yumak and Sadak v. Turkey]], no. 10226/03.'' See also B. Bowring [https://www.webcitation.org/5hRos9CTv?url=http://www.bbk.ac.uk/law/about/ft-academic/bowring/negatingpluralistdemocracy Negating Pluralist Democracy: The European Court of Human Rights Forgets the Rights of the Electors] // KHRP Legal Review 11 (2007)</ref> All parties which won seats in 1999 failed to cross the threshold, thus giving [[Justice and Development Party (Turkey)|Justice and Development Party]] 66 percent of the seats.

In the [[2006 Ukrainian parliamentary election|Ukrainian elections of March 2006]], for which there was a threshold of 3 percent (of the overall vote, i.e. including invalid votes), 22 percent of voters were effectively [[disenfranchised]], having voted for minor candidates. In the [[2007 Ukrainian parliamentary election|parliamentary election]] held under the same system, fewer voters supported minor parties and the total percentage of disenfranchised voters fell to about 12 percent.

In Bulgaria, 24 percent of voters cast their ballots for parties that would not gain representation in the elections of [[1991 Bulgarian parliamentary election|1991]] and [[2013 Bulgarian parliamentary election|2013]].

In the [[2020 Slovak parliamentary election]], 28.47 percent of all valid votes did not gain representation.<ref>{{cite web |title=Results 2020 Slovak parliamentary election|url=https://volby.statistics.sk/nrsr/nrsr2020/en/data01.html|publisher=Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic}}</ref> In the [[2021 Czech legislative election]] 19.76 percent of voters were not represented.<ref>{{cite web |title=Results 2021 Czech legislative election|url=https://www.volby.cz/pls/ps2021/ps2?xjazyk=EN|publisher=Czech Statistical Office}}</ref> In the [[2022 Slovenian parliamentary election]] 24 percent of the vote went to parties which did not reach the 4 percent threshold including several former parliamentary parties ([[List of Marjan Šarec|LMŠ]], [[Let's Connect Slovenia|PoS]], [[Party of Alenka Bratušek|SAB]], [[Slovenian National Party|SNS]] and [[Democratic Party of Pensioners of Slovenia|DeSUS]]).

In the Philippines where party-list seats are only [[Sectoral representation in the House of Representatives of the Philippines|contested in 20 percent]] of the 287 seats in the lower house,{{clarify|date=October 2013}} the effect of the 2 percent threshold is increased by the large number of parties participating in the election, which means that the threshold is harder to reach. This led to a quarter of valid votes being wasted, on average and led to the 20 percent of the seats never being allocated due to the 3-seat cap{{clarify|date=October 2013}} In [[2007 Philippine House of Representatives elections|2007]], the 2 percent threshold was altered to allow parties with less than 1 percent of [[Hare quota|first preferences]] to receive a seat each and the proportion of wasted votes reduced slightly to 21 percent, but it again increased to 29 percent in [[Philippine House of Representatives party-list election, 2010|2010]] due to an increase in number of participating parties. These statistics take no account of the wasted votes for a party which is entitled to more than three seats but cannot claim those seats due to the three-seat cap.{{clarify|date=October 2013}}

Electoral thresholds can produce a [[spoiler effect]], similar to that in the [[Plurality voting system|first-past-the-post voting system]], in which minor parties unable to reach the threshold take votes away from other parties with similar ideologies. Fledgling parties in these systems often find themselves in a [[vicious circle]]: if a party is perceived as having no chance of meeting the threshold, it often cannot gain popular support; and if the party cannot gain popular support, it will continue to have little or no chance of meeting the threshold. As well as acting against extremist parties, it may also adversely affect moderate parties if the political climate becomes polarized between two major parties at opposite ends of the political spectrum. In such a scenario, moderate voters may abandon their preferred party in favour of a more popular party in the hope of keeping the even less desirable alternative out of power.

On occasion, electoral thresholds have resulted in a party winning an outright majority of seats without winning an outright majority of votes, the sort of outcome that a proportional voting system is supposed to prevent. For instance, the Turkish [[Justice and Development Party (Turkey)|AKP]] won a majority of seats with less than 50 percent of votes in three consecutive elections (2002, 2007 and 2011). In the [[2013 Bavarian state election]], the [[Christian Social Union in Bavaria|Christian Social Union]] failed to obtain a majority of votes, but nevertheless won an outright majority of seats due to a record number of votes for parties which failed to reach the threshold, including the [[Free Democratic Party of Germany|Free Democratic Party]] (the CSU's coalition partner in the previous state parliament). In Germany in [[2013 German federal election|2013]] 15.7 percent voted for a party that did not meet the 5 percent threshold.

In contrast, elections that use the [[Ranked voting systems|ranked voting system]] can take account of each voter's complete indicated ranking preference. For example, the [[single transferable vote]] redistributes first preference votes for candidates below the threshold. This permits the continued participation in the election by those whose votes would otherwise be wasted. Minor parties can indicate to their supporters before the vote how they would wish to see their votes transferred. The single transferable vote is a proportional [[voting system]] designed to achieve [[proportional representation]] through [[Ranked voting systems|ranked voting]] in ''multi-seat'' (as opposed to single seat) organizations or [[electoral district|constituencies]] (voting districts).<ref>{{cite web |title=Single Transferable Vote |url=http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/single-transferable-vote |publisher=Electoral Reform Society}}</ref> [[Ranked voting systems]] are widely used in Australia and [[Ireland]]. Other methods of introducing ordinality into an electoral system can have similar effects.